Tag Archives: Social Media

Social Networking Is Often Not Understood

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4355757753_70f08de04aDisclaimer: Social networking is not a substitute for attending social events, talking with others on the phone, or having lunch with someone.

To me there is no question of the growing importance of social networking for people in transition who are looking for their next career stop. However, for many middle-aged people, social networking may be something new and not something they’re right now ready to jump into with both feet in their current predicament. And that’s a shame, because employers and recruiters use it as a selection and validation tool for their prospects.

So, let’s review some of the advantages job seekers can gain by using the phenomenon of social media.

  • It is a screening tool. You can learn about others before you decide to invest your time and energy in the development of a relationship. You can find out if the other person is compatible with you or has the right connections, experience, and knowledge in your industry.
  • Using social media is less frightening. Some people have problems in cold calling someone and asking for a favor, especially when unemployed. Initiating a dialogue with someone you’ve lost contact with for years can be intimidating, but taking that first step via social media makes the reconnection more palatable.
  • It is efficient and convenient. You can conduct a large number of dialogues with many people from your kitchen table without having to waste time driving somewhere.
  • You can network 24 hours a day worldwide, because the Internet never closes and because your online profile can be viewed by anyone anywhere in the world.
  • It is a great opportunity to exhibit your skills and talent. Using social media shows potential employers that you are up to speed and up-to-date and know how to use social media effectively. That serves to differentiate you from others.
  • It is a tool for setting up an in-person meeting. Many people connect initially via the Internet, and once both parties are ready, they meet in person.
  • It shows off your brand. Again, this is another differentiator that highlights your selling points, expertises, and talents.
  • It provides a vehicle whereby to participate even if you have physical challenges such as mobility issues or you are not local.

Learning about social media is a challenge by itself, and the navigation changes frequently. Those in transition who are not ready to meet the challenge by learning how to use social media and then updating themselves on the changing features put themselves at great disadvantage.

Are You Media Social?

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Photo by Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images

Many people don’t realize how different the job search of today is from the job search of not even a few years ago.   Many others find it difficult to learn about today’s different kind of search and therefore shove the issue to their back burner, planning to deal with it later—if they do at all. Yet others, often younger ones, embrace the new wave and benefit from it.

Social media are open for two-way communication and are important for more than social interaction. Those media are especially important for job seekers because more than 80 percent of recruiters use social media to find job candidates. In 2008 and 2009, many company human resources departments eliminated part of their staffs, and thus the recruiting responsibility fell directly on the shoulders of the hiring manager. An advantage offered by social media is that they reveal people’s personalities, and after all, companies are looking for candidates who will fit into their cultures.

Using social media, job seekers should follow the following steps.

  • Identify target companies and the people in your specific area of expertise.
  • Research specific problems you can help with.
  • Identify people within the target company who might be willing to be of assistance to you. This requires tenacity!
  • Connect to those people via social media.
  • Start interacting with them to establish credibility.

Admittedly, accessing the Internet to find a job is tedious, laborious, dull, and exhausting, but it can be made easier with several existing job search tools and organizers. For example:

  • CareerShift.com
  • Becomed.com
  • JibberJobber.com
  • JobKatch.com

None of those organizers are perfect, and users experience a steep learning curve to set one up and master it. Some of the organizers connect easily with LinkedIn and Outlook. Others require a fee. And yet others do not connect with certain job boards.

It’s all about building mutually beneficial relationships. But it’s worthless unless the other party can help and is willing to refer you to others. Of course, the same is expected from you. The advantages of online networking are numerous: It’s free. Job seekers can do research before meeting the other party. The connection is fast and easy. And such communication is effective and speedy. Regrettably, though, in many cases the relationships are shallow and not durable.

In the past, job search networking meant going to meetings, shaking hands, smiling, exchanging business cards, and following up. That still holds true today, but via social networking, one can do preliminary research in order to make an event more effective than it would be without such advance research.

One way or another, to benefit from networking, one needs to vastly increase one’s sphere of acquaintances. And that process itself needs to be managed carefully. Luckily, several programs can provide some help in this area. For example:

  • BatchBlue.com
  • Plaxo.com
  • Gist.com

Again, another learning curve with advantages and disadvantages.

Looking for a job is very time-consuming, but it can have a fun component if one has the patience, tenacity, and foresight to see that at the end of the job search tunnel will be a wonderful job waiting to be found. Good luck on your journey and I invite your comments.

Why Use Social Media While in Transition?

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Starting around 2008, many organizations’ human resources departments needed to eliminate their own staffs, and thus many of the traditional human resources functions got bounced over to the respective hiring managers. Unfortunately, those discrete departments couldn’t always afford expensive job boards, so they needed to think out of the box in order to meet their staffing needs. That need accelerated the use of social media for staffing purposes. At the same time, recruiters, too, felt the same financial pressure, and the result was that 80 percent of them started using social media as well for the same purpose. That new reality was welcomed by practically all sides because it facilitated two-way communication. Plus, social media enabled seeing applicants not only in terms of their skills such as via résumés but also in terms of revealing their personalities for assessment of cultural fit. From a candidate’s point of view, it represented mostly an advantage, but at times, it backfired.

The advent of social media as a staffing medium from the recruiting vantage point as well as a networking tool for candidates necessitated learning to use new tools. And not only that, but the tools are continually evolving, with new ones frequently surfacing to make the old and familiar ones instantly obsolete.

Despite the steep learning curve, however, candidates welcomed the new medium—in many cases if for nothing else because they did not have to meet people in person. In the American culture, as opposed to certain other cultures people typically feel uncomfortable initiating communications with someone else, especially if the two have not been introduced by a third party. Online networking provided candidates with several advantages: it’s free; it allows researching the other party before even initiating a first communication; it’s learned quickly; it’s relatively easy to use; and, if applied right, it’s effective.

Networking is all about building mutually beneficial relationships, but it’s practically worthless unless the other party is willing to refer the first party further—to other people. Since networking is time-consuming, the introduction of efficiency tools into the process is reasonable. Several free tools are worth exploring. Gist.com and Batchblue.com are robust and can help those who want to put some time into learning how to use them. Both of those tools are modified customer relationship management tools, with heavy emphasis on social media such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

Logically speaking, extensive networking is virtually impossible to carry out while people are employed, even though it’s very important to keep doing and is time-consuming. However, when people are in transition, networking is an absolute must. People will not remember you unless you remind them of yourself periodically. An efficient way to do that is via a program called MailChimp.com. Once it’s been set up, this program is easy to use and can potentially prove very useful as a social networking tool.

Social Media: So, What Is It for People in Transition?

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There’s no newspaper or magazine nowadays that does not devote some space to the fast-developing new phenomenon called social media. My explanation for this is very simple: Let’s say you invite some people for a social gathering to take place in your house. Among the dozen or so you host will be some who are very knowledgeable about certain subjects, and some others, less so. That doesn’t mean that those who aren’t very knowledgeable will not contribute to the conversation. They will, but their content will be less factual or less valuable to the listeners.

So, how does this situation apply to the electronic versions of social media? Today there are a significant number of such venues. The more popular are Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn (which is oriented more toward business contacts). People use them for communication in a similar way that those guests of yours do in your house. However, the interchanges happen electronically. Some of the written material is thorough, researched, meaningful, and at times useful. Other information simply amounts to chitchat that has no value except perhaps to a very few. The advantage of social media is that if you don’t like what you read, you can just move on to read something else. Conversely, when you’re faced with a similar situation in a physical venue, it would be rude to tell the speaker you’re bored and you’d prefer to move on.

If you’re in transition and looking for your next job, you’ll have to interact or network with people extensively. Not everything you hear people say will be valuable to you, but some of it will. Similarly, you have to be selective about your sources of reading material and their contents; it’s easy to be swept into meaningless and verbose articles at the end of which you realize you’ve gained nothing. On the other hand, once you learn to become selective and focus only on substantive reading material, you’ll realize you don’t have to reinvent the wheel, meaning that some other people can provide you the information you need.

Twitter, as an example, is limited to 140 characters. Some tweets are obvious wastes of time. The fact that John finished eating his muffin is irrelevant to most readers. But if someone draws your attention to a newly written article about a subject you’re trying to learn more about, that article could prove to be very valuable. The conclusion is that you need to eliminate the garbage found on social media and follow the selective few gems that will compensate you for your precious time.

Using Common Sense Online

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70% of employers have made negative hiring decisions based on online information!

Hello Readers!

Yesterday was the 4th annual Data Privacy Day and of course there was a plethora of articles both on line and in print media about privacy. Folks I have news for you – there is no privacy anymore. Your whole life online is a postcard; this leads me to the headline above – and this article about the impact – both positive and negative – of what you post on line on your job hunt. I have written before on how important it is to be smart about what you post on the Internet – so consider this a gentle reminder.

Don’t post
1. pictures of yourself drunk, drinking or indulging in anything you wouldn’t do at work or in front of your mother
2. comments about how wasted you were last night, last weekend, or on New Year’s Eve
3. anything sexual or relationship based – nobody wants to hear about how you “hooked up” with that hottie in the bathroom
4. that you are hungover and then call in sick
5. pictures of yourself at a baseball game after you called in sick
6. announce to your friends that you are taking a mental health day
7. anything related to religion or political views unless you are a member of the clergy or running for office
8. details of the fight you had with your mother, father, sister, aunt or sundry other relatives or friends
9. how much you hate your boss – or their spouse
10. how ugly|stupid|lazy your coworkers are
*** ALL of these have been done and the offenders been caught/fired/shot at dawn ***

Do think carefully about the brand that is you – in the coming weeks I will be doing a series of posts on personal branding and how to build up your “professional-me”

Common sense is the new privacy!

Comments and feedback are requested and desired; and you are welcome and encouraged to submit questions to thecareerdoctor.

Debra Wheatman, CPRW, CPCC is the founder and Chief Career Strategist of CareersDoneWrite, a premier career services provider focused on developing highly personalized career roadmaps for senior leaders and executives across all verticals and industries.

Debra can be reached at -
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