Job Hunting 2.0

Your job search should take on a new look and feel in the age of social networking. I like to call it “Job Hunting 2.0” because it not the same type of search that it was 20 years ago, heck it’s a lot different than it was just five years ago! We’ve all heard the old adage “it’s not what you know, but who you know” which is time tested and true. However, in the age of social networking we may want to rewrite that old cliché because it is now, not just who you know, but who your friend’s know as well. With the popularity of websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter it has become relatively easy to keep in touch with friends, and to leverage their network of friends on either a personal or professional level. We will stick to the professional connections for the sake of this discussion, and I will focus on searching for your next opportunity in particular.

I would like to begin by discussing what is probably the most popular of all of the so called “social networking” sites and that is Facebook which originally started on college campuses as an alternative to Myspace which was deemed to be much more adolescent.

Facebook was originally intended to be a way to keep track of your friend’s by sharing pictures and notes while trudging though college, although it soon became a great way to reconnect to friend’s with whom you had lost contact. Facebook has become much more since its humble beginnings enlisting everyone from corporate executives to grandparents, which actually makes it a very useful job search tool. While its true that you will probably know everyone that you are friend’s with on Facebook, what you don’t know is who they may know or potential job opening that they may be aware of so one useful piece of advice would be to post notes on your wall letting everyone know that you’re looking for work. And you can be specific and let them know the type of work that you are looking for. Also, be sure to update your status with things like “Still looking” and “had a great interview today” these notes will be sure to jog your friend’s memory that you are still looking and they will be more apt to help without your having to ask directly. One word of caution however, when job hunting, you way want to remove that picture of you with the lampshade over your head at last years Christmas party, or any posts on your wall that doesn’t portray an accurate image of who you are because potential employers may want to view your profile to get a better ideal of the type of person you are.

LinkedIn is my favorite not only because it helps you to connect with people that you know, but also it lists your extended network in orders of magnitude. This allows you to view the exponential growth of your network by considering your friend’s network of friends, which are two degrees away for you, as wall as those connections three degrees away from you or those connected to your friend’s connections. This gives a lot of credibility to the notion that everyone in the world in connected through no more than six degrees of separation. For example, in my LinkedIn profile, I am connected to 456 friends or business associates, and two degrees away are 88,300+ connections, three degrees away there are 5,322,400+ connections and with all of those contacts someone out there has to know someone who’s hiring!

LinkedIn is now connected to Twitter, which allows you to add your Twitter account directly to your LinkedIn homepage so ever the social networking sites are networked!

This functionality will pull your conversations from Twitter and place them on your LinkedIn homepage. If you are not familiar with Twitter, you should be, it’s the fastest growing site and is being used by many employment agencies to blast job openings to followers of their Tweet. The interesting thing about Twitter is that it allows you to connect to people that you don’t know based on social communities and common interest, which is an awesome way to grow your network and find your next job.

Ronald J. Lewis