I’m starting a new series on the blog called Tea Tuesday where I will give advice on a topic based on my personal experience and the type of tea I’m drinking. Since I love tea 🙂
Today I’m drinking Ginger Tea by Yogi in a mug I purchased at Disney during the Princess Half in February. Ginger tea helps with digestion.
Not too long ago, I was aggressively on the hunt for a new opportunity. Sometimes, I was on in person and phone interviews up to 3 times a week. Thankfully, I’m not on an aggressive hunt at this moment. I didn’t blog about it as I went through it for several reasons:
1. Working in marketing, I knew that my blog and all social media activity might be a topic of interest during the interview process. The truth is, sometimes it didn’t come up at all. Other times particular tweets and blog posts were topics of conversation. One time I had to take a social media evaluation, that one was interesting…So, I decided not to broadcast every aspect of the interview process.
2. I didn’t want to sound “down in the dumps”. I wanted to remain positive, optimistic and confident during the interview process. Everyday wasn’t sunshine, but I tried to make the most of it as best as I could. Establishing a daily schedule, working on freelance projects, networking, participating in webinars and Twitter chats helped.
Lately, I’ve received lots of questions from friends in regards to the value of social media during a job hunt. Specifically, I get questions about LinkedIn. Well, for me, LinkedIn was incredibly valuable during my search. In fact, I found a great opportunity using LinkedIn and I will get into how later in this post, so that it can hopefully help anyone else out there on the hunt. Here are a few tips:
1. Use your LinkedIn profile to apply to positions – In order to do this step, you must first fill out your profile entirely. You can search for jobs on LinkedIn and some allow you the opportunity to apply using your profile. This makes things easier. So many websites have a lengthy process that takes a long time and you rarely hear a yay or nay from anyone. When I applied with my LinkedIn profile, that didn’t happen as often. I could see results almost immediately with the job poster looking at my profile or calling me for a phone or in person interview as soon as 5 hours after I applied. Once I filled out my profile completely, individuals looking for social media professionals started to reach out to me. Which helps ease the process of hunting on my part.
2. Adjust your settings – Open up your profile so that anyone can connect with you and so that anyone can see when you look at your profile. These two are important because many times recruiters, hiring managers and hr professionals will want to connect with you and see your profile. If they don’t connect with you often times they will want to look at your profile. The only way that you can see who looks at your profile is if you allow others to see when you look at theirs. So, select this setting and the recruiters, HR and hiring managers can see if you look at their profile -as long as they have the same settings. To me, this would let me know if my resume has been received. If you apply at company X and then notice the next day that the HR Specialist from that company has looked at your profile, that’s a good sign you are being “checked out” as opposed to a resume being ignored. Make sure that your profile is public and that you have a photo.
3. Join LinkedIn groups – I know this works because I found a job within a group! Let me break it down:
To post a job on LinkedIn costs $500 for 30 days. I know this, because I have posted a few! Some companies can’t afford that price point or are not willing to pay it. So, they search for less expensive options for posting. Join groups where your peers will be and also where the hiring managers or positions directly above you will be. For me, I joined social media professional groups or groups where CMOs and Marketing Directors were members. Of course, this will be different for everyone. I personally have posted jobs on my social media platforms knowing that they will be shared and the right person might see it. After you join a group, participate in discussions and contribute here and there when you can. Most importantly, read group updates to see what everyone else is talking about. You might come across a person posting a position. For me, a LinkedIn group post resulted in directly emailing the hiring manager and being hired shortly after. Also, look at what people in your network are posting. You never know what might be a great fit 😉
4. Pay attention to ads – LinkedIn ads are really starting to take off. Sometimes, the ads feature positions specifically in line with the skills that you have on your profile. So again, once your profile is fully filled out, then you could get targeted with an ad that would be a perfect fit. With these, I received a pretty immediate response. It makes things easier on behalf of the person doing the hiring because they know what they are looking for and set the ads to target those people.
5. Follow the companies that you want to work for – Company page managers can see who follows the company page. This will help you look interested to that person. If it’s a small company, this will have the most impact since they might be watching for you to do that.
So there it is! Just a few tips for anyone trying to find out more information on how to leverage a LinkedIn profile for job hunting. Be back next Tuesday for more tea! If you want to know more, or would like to connect with me, here’s my LinkedIn page.
Questions of the day:
Have you ever considered using social media to find a job? Are you currently struggling to find the value of having a LinkedIn profile?
