Using Social Media in Your Job Search

I have been taking another look at the world of social media marketing. Those of us who use LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and the rest tend to live in blissful ignorance of the fact there is a whole industry out there dedicated to using these sites as marketing tools. Now,  if companies can use social marketing sites to promote their products, then job seekers should be able to do the same, to promote themselves.

Many job seekers already use social networking sites to connect with people with mutual interests. But there is a lot more that can be done to raise your job seeker’s profile and make yourself more visible, if you have the patience to do it.

The best way to start building a socially networked job search campaign is by joining the many social media groups on LinkedIn. By following the discussions you will pick up all sorts of tips and hints that will help you to develop your campaign, Showing you for example how your Twitter messages can be automatically directed onto your Facebook wall, how you can use other people’s updates and tweets to reinforce your own messages or how to broadcast your blogs to dozens of sites.

Of course all this may seem a complicated and onerous way of doing something as straightforward as getting a job. And to some degree it is. But the job market today is hugely competitive. Serious job seekers need to find new and effective ways of publicising themselves and getting their name out there. The internet is going to play an increasingly important role in the recruitment process- just look at way that online job boards have come to dominate the market over the past few years.

Marketing yourself assertively through social media may feel like a step too far. But it is almost certainly a step worth taking.