lost its funding. Outsourced. Caught in a merger. Downsized. Fired. It seems like every day I learn of another person who is in the job market. Usually that’s because when they need a job, all of a sudden people jump into networking mode, and I hear from them after years of silence. Hey, I’m okay with that; it’s always good to hear from old friends. And I’ve been fired three times, so I certainly know what it’s like to be in the job market.
Since looking for a job is all about marketing a product (you), I wanted to include a section in the book for those of you who are currently in the job market, soon to graduate from college or university, or otherwise looking for a career opportunity.
If you’re like the vast majority of job seekers, you’d do what everyone knows is the way to find a job: You prepare a resume, obsessing over every entry to make sure it paints your background in the best possible light. You also begin a networking campaign, emailing and phoning your contacts and using networking tools like LinkedIn, hoping that someone in your extended network knows of a suitable job opportunity.
While many people find jobs the traditional way, social media allows a new way to interact and meet potential employers. The old rules of job searches required advertising a product (you) with direct mail (your resume that you sent to potential employers). The old rules of job searches required you to interrupt people (friends and colleagues) to tell them that you were in the job market and to ask them to help you.
As people engage with each other on social media sites, there are plenty of opportunities to network. Just like at a physical cocktail party, if you are unemployed and looking for work, the people you meet may be in a position to introduce you to that perfect employer. The converse is also true: Smart employers look to social networking sites to find the sort of plugged-in people who would fit in at their company or in a certain job. In fact, on the day that I wrote this, a friend asked me to tweet a job opportunity. Had you been watching my Twitter feed that day, perhaps you’d have a new job now.
To find a job via social networks, you have to stop thinking like an advertiser of a product and start thinking like a publisher of information.
So you want to find a new job via social media? Offer information that people want. Create an online presence that people are eager to consume. Establish a virtual front door that people will happily link to—one that employers will find. The new rules of finding a job require you to share your knowledge and expertise with a world that is looking for what you have to offer.
How to Find a New Job via Social Media
It’s not just travel destinations, cosmetics, and air travel that can be promoted via social networks like Twitter. It’s also you and your career. Let’s look at how people use social networks in the job market. David Murray (@DaveMurr) says that after being laid off, he immediately did the traditional things, updating his resume and calling a bunch of contacts. But he eventually realized that he would also have to change gears and pay attention to blogs, social networks, and online communities. Murray already had a Twitter account, so he reached out to his Twitter followers and publicly announced that he was looking for work.
“I guess you could say I used a new tool for old-school networking,” Murray says. “The response was overwhelming, and I received several leads and opportunities that were far more fruitful than my previous attempts.”
Murray then hit on a creative way to use Twitter Search1 in his job hunt. “I came across a comment from Chris Brogan [@ChrisBrogan] on how he used Twitter Search to keep track of his tens of thousands of followers using RSS feeds,” Murray says. “So I simply began entering keywords in Twitter Search like ‘Hiring Social Media,’ ‘Social Media Jobs,’ ‘Online Community Manager,’ ‘Blogging Jobs,’ and so on. I then pulled the RSS feeds of these keyword conversations and made it a habit to check these first thing in the morning every day.”
Bingo. Murray came across lots of conversations related to his keywords, and if something sounded like a good fit for him, he took the liberty of introducing himself via Twitter. “Many times, the jobs had not been officially posted,” Murray says.
How cool is it that on Twitter you can express interest in a job opportunity that hasn’t even been announced yet? It’s like getting inside information!
Hired. It didn’t take long at all for Murray to land the ideal job. His example is of someone who had already established himself in his career; he was looking for a new job because of a layoff. But what about new (or soon-to-be) university graduates searching for an entry-level position?
When Lindsey Kirchoff was a graduating senior at Tufts University near Boston, Massachusetts, she started a terrific blog called How to Market to Me.2 In her blog, Kirchoff offers her opinions on how to market to millennials like herself. “The blog is my opinion,” she says. “It’s about the advertisements that ‘get’ me as a collegiate and 20-something consumer—the companies that understand my values, participate in my humor, and reach me when/where I’m most likely to need them. It’s also about companies that don’t do any of those things and how they can better reach me (and people like me) in the future.”
She used her comments on other people’s blogs, her Twitter feed (@LindseyKirchoff), and other social networking tools to share her ideas about how companies should market to people like her—a focus that also served to showcase her understanding of marketing.
At the time, Kirchoff was on the hunt for a job upon graduation, hopefully at a mid-to-large marketing firm with a strong entry-level program. Soon her active social networking led to discussions both online and in person with marketers at a Boston-based software company. Partly based on her solid understanding of social media as demonstrated by her blog and use of Twitter, Kirchoff was hired full-time and started working soon after graduation.
What Kirchoff and Murray both did was to show potential employers that they were available and ready to contribute. They put their enthusiasm and expertise out there to make themselves stand out from the other candidates, who would simply send a paper application or CV.
Some people might argue that this technique works only to find jobs related to social media and marketing (like Murray and Kirchoff did). While it’s true that social-media-savvy people are often the first to use these techniques, I’m convinced that they would work for many other kinds of job seekers. These days, Twitter is used very widely, and tweets like “I’m looking for an accountant to join my London office” appear frequently. You should be monitoring what people are saying in your field. Plus, if you’re an accountant, salesperson, or production manager looking for work, then you’re really going to stand out from the crowd of 1,000 resumes if you use social media to find a job.
As long as we’re discussing social media and job searches, here’s an important consideration: What comes up when you Google your name with the name of your most recent employer? Potential employers do that all the time. And you can influence what they see! Remember, on the web, you are what you publish.
Social Networking Drives Adagio Teas’ Success
As social networks become more important for organizations of all kinds, the challenge becomes how to integrate them effectively. Adagio Teas,3 a family-owned gourmet tea company founded in 1999, has used social networking to become the most popular online destination for tea enthusiasts. Social sharing and crowdsourced product creation aren’t “bolted-on” strategies at Adagio Teas. Unlike at most companies, social networking is a critical component for driving business.
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