SocialButterfly

New Career Finding Strategies for Job Searchers

Sunday, August 17th, 2008 | Blog Talk, Social Media

My now-fiance had a great blog post idea: How social media is transforming the job search and recruiting field - Thus, here we are, and below I hope you find some great helpful resources and add to this developing list.

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Social Networking Sites

Linkedin - Not only does Linkedin allow people to post jobs, but you can also post jobs yourself, or send jobs to your connections. In addition, you can search for jobs at certain firms, see who posted them, and see if you know anyone who works there. Very informative for the investigative types.

Facebook - Certain Facebook group and fan pages are used for recruiting potential job candidates. For example, the U.S. Department of State uses its fan page as a recruiting tool into foreign policy, public affairs, foreign services officer, or even offers to help navigate a career path.

MyWorkster - MyWorkster offers its users a professional presence online. You can create a profile, resume and even a video resume. This network also has a job listing database, blogs, and more.

Twitter Recruiter’s/Job Postings

Many people post job openings they’ve either heard about or are currently trying to fill in a tweet, with a link to the job posting. (One great reason alone to become a Twitter-er!) However, more companies and individuals are creating Twitter-streams to post jobs and recruit talent. Some include:

• Jim Stroud
• Jason Alba
• InfoSourcer
• IMC2
• Interactive Jobs

Jim Stroud over at the Recruiters Lounge has posted about recruiters and Twitter…surprised that he could only find 85 recruiters in a Twitter search! In my opinion, that’s 85 reasons right there to start a twitter feed.

To find information on a particular industry or job field, use Twitter Search to conduct a search query for certain keywords like “job positions,” “recruiter” or “career advice.”

TwitHire is also a Twitter application that lets you bundle your job postings into 140 characters. It’s also a great resource to look at current job openings.

Blogs

Jeremiah Owyang has created a blog series “On the Move,” highlighting individuals moving within the social media profession. The series also lists great resources to getting plugged into a social media job, as well as listing current high-profile movers and shakers in the social media world (those who work at Fortune 5000 firms with 1000 employees or more).

Alltop.com, a blog aggregate service by topic, has a ‘career‘ page, which features numerous blogs about how to get a job, keep a job, recruit for jobs and more.

Search for blogs based in the city you want to work. For example, KCRecruiting is a Kansas city blog that works to connect job seekers with KC opportunities or author Jim Durbin’s other more general blog, Social Media Headhunter.

More

There’s also other, perhaps more traditional, job search and recruiting strategies too:

• Monster,
• Job Fox,
• Job-Hunt ( who has a list of Fortune 500 career sites and employers by state!),
• Careerbuilder,
• the Web site of the firm you want to work for,
• employee blogs or Twitter account,
• CEO blogs of the firm(s) you want to work for,
• researching the firm’s social media use/presence,
• industry-specific list servs,
• your college/University network,
• your schools network (i.e. Mizzou Mafia for Missouri Journalism),
• fraternity and sorority networks,
• professional organization networks and Web sites,
• Honorary organizations (i.e. Delta Sigma Pi, Omicron Delta Kappa)
• listen to career advice and industry news podcasts
• Word of Mouth (friends, parents, mentors)

Basically, my research has shown that social media is revolutionizing now only business - but how to get employees, find employees and to become an employee.

I know this is a huge, developing topic. And, there’s lots to add, so I look forward to hearing from you all and your experiences. =)

*Note: I didn’t make this information industry specific, but I could if you guys would like. It does lean a bit towards those in social media….course, I’ve also noticed that for social media job searchers, in a way, you have the easiest of jobs because those are the jobs people are posting in the social media space. Other fields/industries are a bit slow to catch on…are
am I wrong?

photo credit: rockronie on flickr

Tags: alltop, career, career path, company, firm, job, job posting, job recruiting, job search, jobs, mentor, recruiters, recruiting, resume, social, Social Media, social network, social networking, twitter

10 Comments to New Career Finding Strategies for Job Searchers

Andre Blackman
August 17, 2008

Great resources here, thanks Alex.

Another thing to note is the growing popularity of adding your social media activities on your resume. I know that when I applied to become an employee at New Media Strategies, it was something I put at the forefront. I completely changed how it looked.

Many companies these days may be interested in knowing that you have a blog and that you are involved in this new space. May give some added sparkles to your application!

socialbutterfly4change
August 17, 2008

@andre Thanks for sharing and that’s a great tip about creating a social media resume. Not only can someone highlight that more on their resume, but you can also create a video resume, create a website of your portfolio or even start a blog!

OnlineMarketerBlog.com
August 17, 2008

This is a great post and so true! I recently tweeted for an intern and had a resume in my inbox in under 30 minutes. It shows me that candidate knows how to use the tools and is prepared for future challenges.

The personal exchange is also useful. You never know when one of your tweet peeps will ask you to meet with someone from their HR department.

Thanks for the post!

Blogs2c.com
August 17, 2008

Great article Alex!

As a College Professor, I often talk with students that are getting ready to graduate and find jobs.

I’ll be sure to direct them to this post.

–Brian

John P. Kreiss
August 18, 2008

Good article! As a recruiter serving real estate and construction firms since 1995, I can honestly say that social media networking has revolutionized recruiting.

Using these sites is now an integral part of identifying top talent in the industries we work. Thanks for sharing.

John P. Kreiss
President & CEO
MorganSullivan, Inc.
\www.morgansullivan.com
jpkreiss@morgansullivan.com

Melanie Guin
August 18, 2008

Another consideration for recruiting in the new technical age is craigslist. It seems to generate endless leads when I’I've used it.

http://www.charitynetusa.com

socialbutterfly4change
August 18, 2008

@Melanie Thank you for pointing us to Craigslist. I’ve heard this before from many freelance writers especially, so a great add!

@Blogs2c Glad I could be of help to your students. It’s a whole new ballgame out there (and a better one I think) =)

@John For a recruiter to give a nom, means a lot as you are in the trenches as we speak. Are there any sites/tools you use specifically when it comes to social media and recruiting?

@OnlineMarketerBlog isn’t Twitter great? =)

segan1
August 19, 2008

Good links! Also I don’t think I would’ve called it TwitHire if I were at Twitter, but hey.
- Segan

socialbutterfly4change
August 19, 2008

@segan1 haha, that’s a good point. I didn’t catch that at first, but yes, TwitHire is a bit of an oxymoron.

Bob Davis
June 2, 2009

Just wanted to give your audience another option in the job hunt, HireFlyer.com. You can actually win a vacation just by creating an account. Not just anohter job board, HireFlyer.com allows the seeker to create a search profile and receive email and text message notifications when jobs are posted to the web site. Those of us with web or email enabled phones can receive a job notification, download our resume and send to the job poster right from our phones. HireFlyer.com doesn’t collect any personal data and you don’t build or upload your resume to the site so we guarantee complete anonymity in case you are still working but looking. HireFlyer.com quite literally allows you to “Find The Right Job. Without All The Work!”. The site is http://www.hireflyer.com.

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