Zuwengo thanks Mark Jenkings for this excellent guest post on finding a career in Social Media Management.
The social media network is a giant hub for communicating and sharing a whole galaxy of information. It is also a great place to start looking for your first job or a professional change to boost your career.
If you’re not so sure about this, remember that Facebook has over 800 million users in the world (almost the equivalent to the population of the USA, Russia and Europe put together) and that, according to a recent study by Jobvite, about 36 million Americans have declared they got their current job through Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn (Facebook leads with 18 million). This is 16% (or one in six) of current job holders, up from 11% the previous year and well ahead of other sources like recruitment agencies or job fairs.
The same report shows that 54% of all current jobseekers are using Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter to find jobs: so go out and join them! The opportunity social networks offer to job seekers are the same they afford as a tool to market products and services. They offer reach, they offer peer approval and are great to build trust with a prospective employer or colleagues. And they are made for sharing, to make your educational or professional profile go that much further that it would purely on the back of standard search-for-a-needle-in-the-haystack job applications.
And don’t think the social media world is made of the three giants only: there’s G+, Tumblr and many others. Tumblr for example has an 85% retention rate and a mind-boggling (or blogging) 69 million blogs on the platform: micro-blogging heaven, and a great source of contacts and stories.
So, you’ve decided to enter the fray: what to do?
First of all, understand your media: each social network has a set of rules that are important to know to get the best out of it. And these rules vary across media, so don’t confuse Facebook with Tumblr, and vice versa. Understand what works in Twitter and what works in LinkedIn, and use them accordingly.
Rule n° two: create a clear, clean and personable profile and take care to write effective content. Whether you’re discussing the Presidential election or describing your professional aspirations, write concisely, check for spelling mistakes and try to show, rather than tell.
Rule n° three: be thorough. List all your educational details and achievements, or your previous/current job and the career you’re aiming for.
Rule n° four: professional doesn’t mix well with personal, so have a professional account separate from your personal one. If your Facebook page is too funky, differentiate to LinkedIn or Twitter for your career one but try to avoid major inconsistencies across social media. Alternatively, make a judicious use of Facebook lists and avoid the following unsavoury posts (with thanks to heresthethingblog.com):
– Photos of what you eat
– Too many relationship changes
– Hackneyed internet slang (eg LOL)
– Ultra personal entries and guilt trips.
Rule n° five and beyond: here’s a list of useful tips picked up by browsing through social media-related websites, like for example www.socialmediatoday.com:
– For Facebook: post notes as opposed to status updates in friends’ feeds, as they stay up longer
– For Facebook: join groups and pages related to your career and like relevant companies
– For Twitter: follow companies you’d like to work for, and their employees
– Keep your profile clean and don’t ignore privacy settings
– Start and join relevant ongoing threads.
And above all: get started, the job market is out there and you’ll hunt all the better in it with social media.
This post is written by Mark Jenkins and he works at CouponAudit as a writer, where thousands of valid and working online coupons for different stores are available including but not limited to diapers.com coupon code and various other online stores.