Career Services discusses the relation between social media and your job search
Career Services at NKU discussed the importance of modifying the social media sites people use while searching for a job on March 31. Jennifer Richmond and Lisa McElfresh, NKU career advisors, discussed changing your profiles on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn so you get the most out of your job search.
According to McElfresh, Facebook has over 1 billion users.
“It’s really the size of a large country when you think about it,” she said.
Facebook is a social networking site where job seekers can learn more about employers.
“A lot of employers have hopped on the bandwagon and created a fan page that you can follow,” McElfresh said.
Facebook also allows employers to look for potential employees for their company. People need to be careful about the way they brand themselves. For a Facebook profile, people need to make sure they make their photo is profile when looking for a job.
“While job searching, use a nice, clean wall in a suit attire,” McElfresh said.
During the job seeking process, it is important that people update their “about me” section to express their career ambitions.
“You want to make sure your ‘about me’ is your professional side,” McElfresh said.
When it comes to the privacy settings on Facebook, people should customize their settings so they’re not using the default ones. Job seekers need to create their own parameters and boundaries, according to McElfresh.
On Facebook, when somebody wants to show that they met a recruiter or just someone that they don’t know very well, it’s possible to add someone as an acquaintance, McElfresh explained. When you post something on Facebook, there is an option where people can select who is allowed to view the profile.
“It allows you to filter without having two separate pages,” McElfresh said.
Even though Facebook users have the ability to choose who can see their profile, McElfresh suggested that everyone should be able to send a job seeker messages and friend requests.
According to Richmond, there are 500 million users on Twitter and there are about 58 million tweets a day.
Twitter, nowadays, is being used as a job board. Human resource professionals and recruiters tweet out jobs and put information out that’s important for people searching for jobs, Richmond said. People are able to build their brand and put themselves out there.
“The image that you are putting out there is based on what you’re following and what you’re saying,” Richmond said. “The information you are putting out there creates that brand.”
On Twitter, job seekers should use information that is professional and polished, but also add their personality. For a job seeker’s username, it should be that person’s full name or use their first name and a key word.
“You are more likely to come up in a search if you’re using your name in your username,” Richmond said.
When it comes to the biography someone puts up on Twitter, it provides a person with 160 characters to impress a potential employer.
“You want to strike a balance between personal and professional,” Richmond said.
When it comes to tweeting, people should tweet a total of 5-20 times a day. 50 percent of posts on Twitter should be original and the other half of the tweets should be retweets or things that the user has seen before.
LinkedIn is thought of as the most professional social networking site. This site has the smallest amount of users out of the three with 225 million users, according to McElfresh.
This website is unique because recruiters are able to post positions for no charge. When the recruiters do this, there are recommendations that show up as potential employees, McElfresh said.
When people put status updates on LinkedIn, these posts should be relevant to the types of jobs that a job seeker is looking for. People should post at least once a week, but no more than three times a day.
For someone’s profile, they need to add a headline.
“Your headline defaults as your job title, unless you go in and change it. Go ahead and go in there and change it,” McElfresh said. “You only have 20 characters that demonstrates who you are and what you can do.”
On LinkedIn, people have the option to recommend other job seekers. The website says that you need a total of three recommendations to have a “complete” profile on the website.
“You want to aim for 10 percent of your network and recommendations to be experts,” McElfresh said.
When people are sending requests for recommendations, you should anticipate that only 15 percent of these people would respond.
One person who attended the workshop and learned a lot was Patia Tabar, who is a Counseling graduate student. Talbar learned that she should get a Twitter account because she did not realize that having an account is important for your job search.
“Just do it. Put yourself out there, “ Tabar said. “Can’t win if you don’t play.”