1. The Magic of Social Media Networking
By Rebecca Zwart Wood
President, IAWP, San Francisco Chapter
Once upon a time in America, everyone had a job. Families lived in nice homes, had
plenty of food to eat, wore nice clothes, and lived happily for a long, long time.
But then, some tribes of people did not like this. They became greedy and snatched all
the jobs, the food, the clothes and the joy that a lot of Americans had.
Driven by this unhappy turn of events that lasted for a long time, the computer wizards
of modern time met and intertwined their magic wands to fashion a net that would catch
the jobs that have flown away.
Thus social networking was born which renewed the hope of these Americans to
reclaim the jobs that they once owned.
The wizards like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen & Jawed
Karim of YouTube, Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, & Noah Glass of
Twitter, and Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, to mention a few, have created such an
invention of staggering proportions called social media networking, that can only be
surpassed by the world of fairy tale.
And we muggles are baffled with such a magical creation- a web of gizmos that we
could use in our quest for jobs. Somehow we have to find a way to use them.
The metaphor I used in the story is closer to the truth than we think. Because in reality,
social media networking is a modern invention that is indeed magical.
I’m sure a lot of us know that the word “muggles” comes from the Harry Potter stories
that’s popular not only among kids but also among grown-ups who still have kept their
childlike faith despite the harshness of real life. The word refers to ordinary people like
us who do not possess the wizard minds of these young computer geniuses.

2. Social Media Networking (SNM) is here to stay for a long, long time. As workforce
development champions, our role is to teach job seekers to utilize these SMN tools in
their pursuit of jobs.