Why are we even talking about social media in the context of job search? Simple!
Recruiters are using social media to find talent. In fact, several surveys in the last few years point to a very high percentage of recruiters using social media.
Adding to this trend, LinkedIn’s API has now made it even easier for recruiters to access fresh talent via some powerful recruiting software tools.
My philosophy is that if you want to make a sale, step into the shoes of your customer.
Translation: if you want to land a job, understand how recruiters do their jobs. Then adjust your job search strategy so that you pop up on their radar.
The shift here is that LinkedIn’s own search capabilities are being used less as more advanced technologies emerge, making recruiting much easier for professionals. If you arestill keyword packing, get with the program. LinkedIn is a whole different animal. Keyword packing and most of those SEO tricks for your LinkedIn profile are yesterday’s news.
There are four main elements that you now need to optimize for. And they are much different then before. (Yes, these are even new updates since my book “Job Searching With Social Media For Dummies” came out.
1. For the Passive Search: Bigger IS Better
When you look at software such as Bullhorn Reach, you’ll notice that primed candidates pop up based on the user’s own social network. This means that if you are connected to that recruiter, and you just lost your job, added a hot job title, or otherwise did something to your profile, you’ll pop up.
Don’t believe me? Watch this video and pay particular attention to minute 1:50.
Many of these advanced social recruiting tools deliver search results for the recruiters based on that person’s individual network. Yep. Essentially, if you are not in a recruiter’s network, you are not likely to show up in search results. So how many recruiters do you have in your network?
2. Location Location Location
Another essential factor in whether or not you come up in a recruiter’s search is your LinkedIn profile location. It would be a mistake to be too general (like “USA”), but it would also be a mistake to enter your current location if you want to move.
If you are looking for a job in Nevada (god knows why!) and you live in North Carolina (okay, lots of sun too), you need to put your DESIRED location in your LinkedIn profile – even though you don’t currently live there.
Think about how a job board works. You are asked two things: where you want to look for the job and what you want to do. Right?
This is exactly how recruiters use their specialized software. They get hired to fill positions, or they are corporate recruiters and are looking for local talent. So they use zip codes to filter names from their list.
Be sure your LinkedIn location settings are where you want them to be.
3. Skills to Pay the Bills
Did you remember getting an email from LinkedIn a while ago asking you to fill in your Skills for your profile? I’ll bet you did, but you probably deleted it with your spam. That was a mistake. Here’s why: “Skills” in LinkedIn are set up like tags. You can have multiple skills to tag yourself with, but you can have only one or two industries and only one job title. Many software packages include a skills filter for their LinkedIn searches.
Why? Because when a company or hiring manager talks to a recruiter, they aren’t always writing clear job descriptions. Often, recruiters have to write or re-write the job description or even guess at what type of person is needed to fulfill a role. So all they have to work with is a list of random skills and they need to go out there and find people with those skills.
Remember in the movie Taken, with Liam Neeson? When they kidnap his daughter, he says, “I have a very particular set of skills, skills I’ve acquired over a very long career.” Well, go to your LinkedIn profile and tell the world what very particular skills you have acquired over your career.
I would be interested to know if there are any statistics on how many people actually get hired via social networking tools. I think that social media is over rated when it comes to hiring. Personality, drive and motivation do not come through - only what the "poster" wants others to see. In fact, after having just gone through the acquisition of Sun by Oracle, I do not know of one person who was hired (after the rounds of thousands being RIFed) from social media. Everything was through personal connections. This leads me to believe that personal connections are more important than ever because as the old saying foes," Don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see." Seeing people posted on the internet is nothing like good old fashioned relationships.
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Likemjj3sprogs I think there is one assumption you are making that is causing this block. You are assuming that social media replaces personal connection. This is NOT true. Many HR professionals still retain this old way of seeing the social media landscape. It needs to change.
Not only are there a lot of studies out on how companies hire using social, but there is an entire industry growing around social recruiting worth billions of dollars of market share with new software companies starting every month.
Personality, drive and motivation are very clearly communicated when social media is used strategically and effectively, which is what I teach. The fact is that everyone is going to get Googled. And it's not uncommon for my readers to walk into a job interview and the first words the interviewer says is, "Wow, I feel like I already know you."
The internet has shifted away from an anonymous experience to a very personal one. And it's much harder for anyone to lie or be inauthentic without raising some red flags.
So I challenge you to see social as an augmentation to personal relationships, not a replacement to them. After all, if I meet someone in person, add them to my LinkedIn network, and we stay in touch via LinkedIn, can you clearly define where personal relationship ends and social media starts. The distinction is utterly ridiculous and rooted in an old fashioned view of the internet.
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LikeHere's my problem with the "skills" tag: too many, and too vague.I could go through the whole list of skills and say to most of them, yes I have that skill. But then, so do many of us, so the tag becomes meaningless.
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Likegseverett1
You can add any skill that you have it does not have to be from the list. Just type it then click add.
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Likegseverett1 Let's look at what you mean by meaning, and first agree that there are 2 kinds of job search, the "active" job search and the "passive" job search.
In an active job search, you are reaching out to human beings, and they are looking at your profile in return to see if you're worth getting back in touch with. The strategy here is to have a humanly meaningful profile. Creative headlines and a good picture will do wonders.
In a passive job search, you are getting discovered (is it by accident?) by recruiters or hiring managers based on certain mechanical elements on your profile. Here we talk about the proper use of keywords, descriptive, rather than creative headlines and so forth.
Using the Skills feature falls under the Passive category and therefore has huge potential of helping you get found. Therefore, it is not meaningless at all!
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Thanks for the RTs phattimer and @DeniseMlps!