What have you been doing lately?
a) Worrying and praying
b) Gossiping about your ex-boss
c) Networking
If you nodded yes to ‘c’ you’re in good company.
Today job seekers are not the only ones who go online to look for jobs. Most employers have savvied up to the online game and directed their recruiters to scour social and professional networks to spot the best and the brightest.
This, clearly, is good news for those people who “while away time” on the Web. These compulsive networkers who cannot stay away from LinkedIn, Facebook, SlideShare, Twitter, Scribd, Youtube or blogs for even a minute are ahead of the rest of the pack in the search for their next job.
But really, is effective networking really about spending all your life online? Perhaps not, but the quality of the time you spend does matter.
Social networks have their relative strengths and weaknesses and your success is determined by how smartly you use their features, and ultimately about how you project yourself.
Here are a few tips to get the most out of social networks:
- Separate personal and work accounts by creating unique identities to be used with each set of audiences.
- Tweak your privacy settings to ensure that your work colleagues don’t see what is meant for your friends.
- Divide your team between job sites and building your social media presence.
- Seek out relevant groups or networks and join them.
- Listen to relevant conversations on your groups or communities and participate in them.
- Seek and showcase recommendations from your superiors and colleagues.
- Create an online portfolio of your work. Make digital copies and upload them to SlideShare (presentations), Flickr (images, artwork and photographs), Scribd (works of text for which you own the copyright), YouTube or Vimeo (videos).
- Storyvite’s unique interface allows you to compile a Visual profile by mashing up video and presentation formats.
- As an extra precaution, make sure that you don’t upload any potentially objectionable content even in your non-work identities.
Soon enough, your presence will be felt.
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