Using Social Media For Career Advancement

Well, there’s good news and bad news regarding the use of social media for career advancement. The good news is that social media can help you get a job. The bad news is that social media can help you lose a job. Let’s start by discussing some websites that can help you get a job.

LinkedIn: I highly recommend that college students and recent grads join LinkedIn. Whenever I speak at colleges, I ask students if they are using LinkedIn and usually only a few say yes. There are currently 80 million members on LinkedIn and while the average age of its members is much higher than the age of college students, if you join while in college or right after you graduate, you will have a great advantage in your job search.

LinkedIn is a professional website, not a social one. You can put your resume on it and unlike a paper resume, you can add one photo of yourself if you desire, which is usually a headshot of you in professional attire. One of the great things about LinkedIn is that once you are connected with someone, you have access to all of their connections. If you want to get a job in finance, for example, and your new connection has 100 connections, you can go through each connection and search for those in the finance field. You can then ask your mutual connection to introduce you via LinkedIn to those finance connections and perhaps one or two would be willing to help you.

LinkedIn can search your online address book and let you know which of your contacts are already on LinkedIn. You can also search for jobs, people, and organizations on LinkedIn. However, one of the big advantages of LinkedIn is that you can get recommendations from professors, fellow students, former bosses and co-workers, etc. Employers will be checking your LinkedIn profile when you apply for a job and the more recommendations you have, the bigger advantage you’ll have over those who don’t have recommendations.

Twitter: Believe it or not, Twitter is not just about following celebrities or having your friends tell you where they are having coffee. Many of the top job search websites like Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com, etc. have a profile on Twitter. Importantly, there are many companies and people who give career advice on Twitter every day. They provide links to Internet articles on interviewing tips, networking tips, resume/cover letter tips, job listings, etc. All you have to do is enter a few keywords and you will find tons of valuable information on how to get and keep a job.

Facebook/MySpace: While these two websites are social networking websites, they can also be utilized as valuable networking tools when you are searching for a job. At the top of your Facebook page, for example, it asks “What’s on your mind?” This is a great place to let your Facebook “friends” know that you’re looking for a job in a particular field or company and to ask them if they know anyone that can help you. All it takes is one good referral and you may be on your way to getting a great job.

So far, I’ve discussed the positives of using social media for career advancement but you must be aware of the dangers, too. Perhaps you’ve heard the true story of a young woman who wrote on her Facebook page that she hated her job and her boss. Unfortunately, she had forgotten that her boss was one of her Facebook “friends.” He called her in the next day and basically told her he was sorry she didn’t like him or the job and showed her the door. One of my former colleagues was allegedly dressed provocatively on their MySpace page (they were fully clothed). The president of our company found out because one of the company rats, I mean employees, told the president about it who then spoke with my colleague’s boss who then spoke with my colleague. I’m sure this was quite embarrassing for them but these are just two examples of the dangers of social networking websites.

I think it’s quite apparent that we must all make the assumption that your employer or future employer is checking out your social networking profile. I know that there are privacy settings but they seem to be constantly changing and personally, I don’t trust them. As a result, you need to be diligent and be careful about the photos you post on your profile (don’t post partying photos, bathing suit photos, etc.). You also need to be very careful about what you say and what your friends say on your profile. Big Brother and Big Sister are watching.

As we have seen, social media can be extremely helpful in giving you an advantage when networking and job hunting but you do need to be cautious. You may even want to Google yourself and see what pops up. If you don’t like what you see, try to change it. Importantly, in addition to utilizing social media for career advancement, please keep in mind that there is no substitute for face-to-face contact. If you use a combination of online and in-person networking, you will be successful in your job search and career advancement. Good luck!

This article was a guest post for the Generation Y website ebrandingMe-http://ebranding.me/