A Joseph Project (http://workmatters.org/the_joseph_project/) presentation about using Social Media in the job hunting process

1. Job Hunting With Social Media
May 12, 2010
SocialMediaRevolutionary.com

2. Overview
 Define goals and target relevant companies
 Complete profiles fully
 Make connections
 Focus on professional networks
 Join industry specific networks
 Be creative with media
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3. Social Media Is Not A Fad
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4. Simple Social Media Strategy
 Home Base – The central
place you want to interact
with people
 Outposts – place where you
have a presence and
participate and promote
yourself
 Passports – where you have
profile but don‟t take part in
the conversation
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5. What Is Your goal?
 Clearly define the industry
you‟re interested in
 Identify 10-20 keywords
that apply to your job
 Are they in a field that
uses social networking?
 Vendor community had
only 1024 queries per
month.
 Somebody out there is
talking about what you‟re
interested in. Find them.

6. Consider Targets
 Identify the top five companies that you
would like to work for
 Use search engines to track employees that
currently work there
 Connect with the person directly and invite
them to lunch
 Does the company have an outpost on social
media networks?
 Follow on Twitter
 Join Facebook Fan Pages
 Join LinkedIn Groups
 Use local resources-@nwajobs on Twitter
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7. Where Do Employers Start?
 How do you want to be found?
 What keywords are important to your job search?

8. Complete Profiles Fully
 Make sure your target
keywords are in your
profile
 Link back to one place,
your “home base” that
has all the detail about
you
 Be a real person
 Use a picture
 Talk about your
personal life…a little

9. Make Connections
 Tell everyone you‟re
looking for a job
 Exploit Strength of Weak
Ties
 Crowdsource your job
search
 Give back, pay it forward
 Introduce yourself to
strangers
 Be humble
---- Strong Ties
---- Weak Ties
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10. Be Polite
 Don‟t consistently talk about
yourself and not help others.
 Don‟t randomly approach
followers you barely talk to
and simply ask for favors.
 Don‟t introduce yourself as
“Pink House Gardening.”
 Don‟t spam.
 Don‟t publicize private
conversations.
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11. Remove Inappropriate Material
•Check your profile and your friends’ profiles for
•Pictures
•Comments

12. Focus On Professional Networks
First
 LinkedIn is the office
 Facebook is the home
 Twitter is Happy Hour
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13. LinkedIn Best Practices
 Excellent home base.
 Follow their profile setup tool.
 Complete profile fully, including picture.
 Get recommendations.
 Import all your contacts from Outlook, Gmail, etc.
 Gives you 2nd, 3rd level links to their networks.
 Join appropriate groups.
 Search for jobs and people on a periodic schedule.
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14. Twitter
 Be explicit: “I‟m looking for a job in the
NWA area as an XYZ.”
 Don‟t be pathetic: “Please, please, please
give me a job. I‟ll take anything.”
 Update often.
 Be relevant: make sure your keywords are
in your posts.
 Connect it to your home base and
outposts.
 Use a Twitter client like HootSuite or
TweetDeck to stay organized.
14  Link to status of LinkedIn and Facebook.

15. Twitter Example
 “Basically, I was „stuck‟ at my previous job in that there was no
place to move up, and my job was morphing into something
completely different than what I was hired for. So I was on the
lookout. Submitted my resume to a few places, but never heard
back from anyone. I had seen tweets from @nateritter for a
couple of weeks that he was looking for a CakePHP developer. I
knew PHP but not specifically the Cake framework. One day,
while on the elliptical at work, I saw a tweet from him saying he
needed a “PHP” developer. I DM‟d him back saying something like
“don‟t you need a Cake person?”. To which he replied that he
couldn‟t find a Cake person so he expanded to just PHP. I said I
was interested and met him later that week. Now I work with him
and couldn‟t be happier.” - Todd Armstrong, @cantondog
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Source: http://mashable.com/2010/03/08/job-seeker-results/

16. Show Your Expertise
 Start a blog.
 Free options:
 Blogspot
 Wordpress
 Comment on target companies‟
blogs. Become a regular.
 Participate in groups:
 Yahoo!
 Google
 LinkedIn
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17. Blog Example
 “I got my job thanks to my food and music blog. A recruiter that
was working with my company, Context Optional, happened to be
a foodie that was familiar with my blog and was impressed with
my social media know-how. Funny enough, a number of people at
my company got their jobs through social media–our Community
Manager, Lauren Friedman was also discovered through her blog,
TheOffBeatReport, and Twitter.” - Kasey Fleisher Hickey,
@kfleisher
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Source: http://mashable.com/2010/03/08/job-seeker-results/

18. Explore Industry Specific Networks
 NurseLinkup - Nursing
 Model Mayhem - Modeling
 FohBoh - Restaurant Industry
 ActiveRain - Real Estate
 Decorati - Interior Design
 Fashionising - Fashion
 TheBoaters - Boating
 TappedIn - Education

19. Be Creative – YouTube Interview
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20. Other Ways To Be Creative
 Make a presentation
about your industry
and put it on
SlideShare.
 Advertise your brand
using AdWords and
Facebook Social Ads.
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21. Blog Example
 “I got the attention of 2 companies, who would have never even
considered me because I didn't live in their city, with a simple ad. I
went to Facebook, created the ad which targeted directly to folks
that worked at these particular companies and asked for a contact
in HR. The ads read something like "I want to work at <insert
company> - Hi, my name is XX, I'm a <digital marketer, social
media, web strategist, programmer, designer, etc>. I'd love to
work at <insert company>, can you help me out? I set a small
budget of about $5/day and sent the ads to my online resume
located at http://onehalfamazing.com/resume. I had 2 interviews
within a couple of days and spent a total of $12 to land both of
them.” - Bob Hazlett, http://onehalfamazing.com
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Source: http://mashable.com/2010/03/08/job-seeker-results/

22. Parting Thoughts
 Social Media is not a replacement for traditional job
searching techniques.
 Social media is an indirect method of marketing. Sometimes
its hard to see concrete results quickly.
 Keep track of the conversation:
 Google Alerts
 Twitter Search
 Using Social Media will put you ahead of the crowd since it‟s
so new.
 Social media is a conversation not broadcast medium. It is
two- way.
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23. Questions?

24. Thank you!
Collin Condray
Twitter.com/ccondray
SocialMediaRevolutionary.com
collin@SocialMediaRevolutionary.com