Social Media Advice Archives - Page 2 of 2

I recently asked Oasis HR to share their thoughts on how job seekers should be making use of the various Social Media sites as part of their job hunt and I am delighted that they have shared their thoughts below.

Gone are the days where agencies and internal recruiters would have a job role to fill, post an advert and wait for responses and that be it. Nearly everyone has now heard of the term social media and a large majority are using it but are they using it effectively to benefit their career?

In this day and age people need to be more proactive and think about how they market themselves as professionals. As the number of platforms people can find information about you increases, the more important it is to create a ‘personal brand’. This is especially true for people actively seeking jobs. Below are some tips on how to optimise your personal brand on different social media platforms to be appealing to recruiters and companies. If you want to position yourself as a valuable asset for a specific industry or promote your unique skills-set, then it’s up to you do to this online (even more relevant in today’s candidate driven market).

Firstly not every platform is relevant for every industry and job role, but you need to ensure you have presence on a number of platforms to expose yourself effectively to the businesses you’re targeting. Below are the platforms that we, as recruiters, may use to headhunt talent with tips on how to optimise your profile on each. Bear in mind that at Oasis HR we predominantly operate within the mid to senior HR market, however these tips are mostly relevant no matter what job you’re looking to secure.

LinkedIn

Join groups and network with relevant industry bodies and thought-leadership communities
If you’re actively searching for a job, update you headline to state this and put a contact number. For example ‘seeking new opportunities, please contact on 077********’
Make your headline different to your job title so that you come up in more search results
Make sure profile is set to public
Get people to endorse you for relevant skills
Comment on relevant articles in your field to increase your exposure to recruiters (this also helps you position yourself as an industry expert)
Incorporate a blog into your profile
Connect to as many relevant recruiters as possible
Research prospective employers’ company pages and connect with relevant contacts when possible
Have a look at another blog we wrote on 13 tips to optimise your LinkedIn profile

Blogging

Blogging can be great tool for increasing your exposure and helping you to be seen as an industry expert. It is important to blog relevant industry articles but also communicate it in your own style to give the reader an idea of your personality. A blog can also be something you present in interviews showing your passion and knowledge of the area you are applying for.

Facebook

Follow corporate pages and comment on discussions. Also follow the careers page of companies you want to work for to gain information on the company and receive real time updates of new requisitions

Make sure your profile looks professional to the outside eye. Facebook is a tool we all use to engage more informally with our personal networks, so be conscious of your privacy settings and think twice about the type of posts and pictures you’re sharing if you don’t restrict your content to ‘friends only’

Twitter

Another tool to market yourself. If you follow the right people this will give you content to post much quicker than searching for it yourself
Re-tweet industry experts / news and tweet any of your own content to ensure you are seen as knowledgeable in your industry
Follow and engage with companies
Many companies post jobs via Twitter and also use hashtags to add a degree of ‘searchability’ to their hiring opportunities. Play around with your searches to uncover roles relevant to you

Google+

This social media platform offers a real opportunity for candidates and recruiters. Although it is not as well used as other social media sites, many recruiters are beginning to capitalise on the platform from a headhunting perspective, so again it can provide you with a further opportunity to reveal yourself to recruiters

Make sure your profile represents your personal brand and your areas of speciality
Have your contact details present
Use circles and communities to network and read around your industry

If you don’t have time for all of the above, we would highly recommend you focus on a couple of social media platforms and ensure these really represent you. The more people you follow that are relevant to your industry, the more information and insights are at your disposal to post on your own pages. But most importantly you are dramatically increasing your chances of crossing paths with a recruiter who might just have your dream job at their finger tips!

Oasis HR

A lot of businesses will tell you that they’re on an exciting journey with great projections for the future. We really are. Following our ‘back-bedroom’ origins in 2004, we’ve come a long way; globally recognised awards, international operations and an established APAC networking group.

We certainly don’t intend on slowing down any time soon. Through a blend of ambition, dedication and commitment to our industry sector, HR, Oasis HR will become the…Number one Global HR Recruitment partner of choice.

You can connect with us on Twitter at @theoasishr

When I was living and studying in Rome one of my favourite activities on the way back from lectures at the Gregorian University was to sit in Piazza Navona for an hour with a cup (or two!) of coffee and watch the world go by.

I have always been a great people watcher because just by observing people you can learn so much. As I am sure those of you who are familiar with Piazza Navona will be aware there is no better place to people watch. Observing the jugglers and entertainers, the tourists rushing to their next historic sight and of course the residents of Rome going about their business can give you some great insights.

So what’s all that got to do with the question I posed as the subject of this post you are wondering? Well a little like sitting in Piazza Navona watching the activities of your LinkedIn connections can be fascinating (you can find me here: Paul Duxbury) and insightful. You get to see the interesting people they are connecting with, they share posts that they find interesting and they offer their own posts and insights to engage you. Well, most of them do! Isn’t that what LinkedIn is all about? Building relationships, sharing interesting content and supporting people in your network? So why on earth would I be suggesting to a job seeker that you should consider disconnecting from people?

Let me set the scene for you! Early one morning a few weeks ago I received an invite to connect from someone I didn’t know, who had no photograph and who had used the default LinkedIn connection request with no personalisation. Now ordinarily I would have declined the connection. However, that particular morning for some reason I accepted the invitation. I say “for some reason” but perhaps on reflection I was opening myself to a learning experience without realising it and of course all learning experiences are good! Yes, I know it’s the Learning & Development Professional in me! For the sake of this post let’s call the person in question “Josephine.”

An hour or so later I logged back onto LinkedIn and was met by a long list of “Josephine has connected to…..” which I assumed must have been because the person in question was relatively new to LinkedIn and was connecting to people they knew – so I thought nothing of it.

But over the ensuing days I noticed, in fact I couldn’t fail to notice, that Josephine was connecting to between 10 and 30 different people every day. They hadn’t responded to the message that I sent them shortly after accepting their connection request nor had they shared anything, commented on anything or interacted in anyway. I reached the stage towards the end of last week that I started to wonder how many people they would have connected to since I last logged on! I also became aware of others who seem to have the same approach to their use of LinkedIn. I started to question the value I was getting from learning how many people they were connecting to each day. More importantly I began to realise that because my timeline was full of these “Josephine has connected to…..” I was missing updates from my other connections.

So over the weekend I decided to purge my LinkedIn connections and remove those that appeared to be simply treating it as a numbers game and adding dozens of connections every day.

So yes in my view there comes a point when you should disconnect from others on LinkedIn. If you are getting nothing from the relationship and the other party (Josephine) doesn’t appear to want to engage or interact then that’s the point at which to say “not tonight Josephine” – sorry a little corny I know!

LinkedIn is a professional network where you can engage with others, interact with them, learn from them and hopefully add something to the relationship. It’s not like Twitter where your sharing of content is on a much more superficial level because with LinkedIn you allow people into your network and share a lot about yourself that you may not choose to share elsewhere. Below is a brief Prezi that I created a little while ago which may help you with building relationships on LinkedIn.