Social Media Services

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social networking site specifically for connecting with other business and individuals. It will be key to your social networking strategy because it helps you establish connections with coworkers at past jobs, former managers, and your network of friends and acquaintances. Founded in 2002 and launched in May 2003, LinkedIn now counts more than 200 million members as part of its network, with representation in more than 200 countries and territories.

The network provides an important user base for job seekers. According to online marketer Lewis Howes, 45 percent of business professionals on LinkedIn are business decision makers.

Job seekers can establish a professional presence online by creating a resume, gaining recommendations and answering questions. There is also a job board that allows groups and businesses to post openings. The most important item to remember about LinkedIn is that simply creating a profile will not help you make the connections to find a job. You must interact and create valuable content and connections to resonate with employers and other members alike. View free webinars to help you learn to use LinkedIn.

Use LinkedIn to remind your network contacts of your availability for employment and to share with them your insights on industries or events or information on business issues. Those members, in turn, can link you to members you may not know but who could have job openings at their companies or be aware of openings elsewhere. Join LinkedIn alumni, special interest and industry groups, list your skills that will get you endorsements, and participate in group discussions. Groups sometimes discuss various job openings. Having connections won’t get you the position, but joining groups and offering meaningful answers to questions will call attention to your expertise and showcase your value.

Twitter

Twitter, a micro-blogging social media platform, allows members to follow one another and send messages no longer than 140 characters, or around two sentences. Politicians promote their ideas to constituents, news organizations give information about stories as they develop, celebrities keep fans updated on their lives, and regular folks reveal, well, anything they want, from their passions to what’s up with their kids. A message is called a tweet. By linking a message to a longer article, video or photo gallery, users add more value to their tweet.

These short messages provide a perfect electronic platform to let people know you are looking for a job — and to establish yourself as a valuable candidate for the jobs you seek. You could use Twitter to refer your followers to your LinkedIn page, to inform them you recently graduated from a college, or to tweet about things going on in your career. You can impress employers and people in your network by linking to articles or grabbing relevant quotes on your industry. If you want to tweet a link to something, but the URL consumes most of your 140-character limit, use TinyUrl to shorten the length.

And don’t forget to use Twitter’s search capabilities: Search by job or industry hashtags for jobs on Twitter and do advanced searches. Visit other websites for finding jobs on Twitter such as CareerArc or Tweetdeck.

In “Twitter Helped Me Get a New Job: 5 Success Stories,” by Amy Levin-Epstein on CBS MoneyWatch, UCLA graduate Jessica Humphrey shared how she found employment:

Looking for a job in PR, Humphrey started following the Bread & Butter Public Relations Twitter account and soon found they were looking for interns. After interviewing, the company offered her an internship but she “needed to pay the bills” and declined. Still, she kept in contact with the company’s team in Austin and saw tweets about an opening in its new San Francisco office. She received great recommendations from the company’s Austin team and landed the job.

Facebook

Facebook is by far the largest social media platform. Facebook connects friends and colleagues and provides spaces for conversations, videos, photographs and, of course, profiles of users. It has apps for job search such as Jobvite, which lets people connect and apply to jobs all within Facebook, and gives you the option to join Facebook Groups to find jobs in your field.

Facebook’s Advanced Search function can be useful when job hunting. Use it to find profiles of people who attended a certain college, who once worked at a particular company or who live in your community. You can even search for people by location, age and first name — in case you’ve forgotten their surnames.

In an effort to get to know their job applicants, employers often look at Facebook accounts of applicants. According to a survey of more than 300 hiring professionals, a whopping 69 percent of recruiters have rejected a candidate based on content found on his or her social networking profiles — an almost equal proportion of recruiters (68 percent), though, have hired a candidate based on his or her presence on those networks. Post only comments and images on Facebook and other social media sites that you would want your prospective boss to see and adjust your privacy settings appropriately.