Tips on Getting Employed Using Social Media

Twitter – create a free Twitter account using your personal name.  Put your 30-second elevator  speech* in the information about you section and include an email.  You might want to create a personal email just for employment.   Once you have created a twitter account, add your twitter link to your resume.  Attach a recent picture and follow only employment-related twitter sites such as job boards and employment services.    

Facebook- if you don’t have a Facebook profile, then you should proceed to create free one.  When creating your profile, provide only information that an employer would need to see.  You might want to include your 30 second elevator speech in your profile section.  In your interests section, include words such as “networking” “team building” “employment opportunities”. Insert a professional recent picture and then look for employers and employment related sites in your field of interest and “like” them.  If you already have a Facebook profile, then review your existing page as the employer would see it.  Are all posts relevant?  Are all pictures appropriate?  Is every post made by you spelled correctly, and are you using proper grammar?  Is there profanity on your feed?  If you have a Facebook page and you answered “yes” to any of these questions and you really want to go to work, then you have two options – go in and re-create your existing page to a more professional one or create a new account and professional page and once it is created add it to your resume.

Linked In- Creating a LinkedIn profile is time consuming but is definitely worth the work you put into it.  Linkedin is a professional networking site.  Like Facebook and Twitter, it is free to join.  However, the site is designed for the business professional world.  Once again, when you create your linked in profile be careful of spelling and grammar.  Post a recent professional picture.  Look for professional persons you may know and also join groups which are correlated to the field you aspire to enter.  

© Copyright Vet2Work/Naturallysilver 2011. No re-publication of this article is permitted without express permission. This is an excerpt from "Successful Career Moves" by C.A. Stapleton. About the author:  C.A. Stapleton, A.S., B.S., M.B.A., is an experienced, published professional career consultant, mentor, and résumé/ biographical writer.