Highly Effective Job Search

Right now, Linked In is an essential career management and job search tool. It is widely used by recruiters and employers, and there are signs that it could be on its way to edging out Monster and other job boards as the top job site.

I say “right now” because Internet tools evolve rapidly. The old original successes in social networking – like Friendster and MySpace – were initially seen as novelties, sites to be used only by the young and single.  Now, of course, the category has evolved to produce serious business and career management tools. This evolution will continue and accelerate, so don’t assume that Linked In will be number one forever.

Social networking sites are not only about finding your next job, they’re also about locating people who can help you advance your career. They publicize you and your expertise to a broader audience.  They can accelerate the process of your making the real-life networking connections that will advance your job search now and support your career progress when you’re employed.

Perhaps most important, these sites allow you to more effectively manage your networking connections, so that you can use your precious face-to-face time only with those connections that you already know to be the most interesting and productive. They map your networks and the networks of people you know, allowing you to more quickly locate people with knowledge of the companies on your target list.

Real networking of course is about shared interests. It goes beyond professional interests to personal interests of all kinds, so social networking sites can enrich your life as well as your career. And, of course, the two are not separate. Your golf, yoga and parenting networks can and do help you make career progress and accelerate your job search.

You may want to have a page on other social networking sites beyond Linked In. Some are designed for special purposes and niche audiences and may be even more useful for some people. It’s also an issue of which sites your current contacts are on, since it’s easier for them to Link with you or Friend you if they already have a page.

Should you also have a personal website, linked from your social networking site? If you’re in a profession where a portfolio is expected – graphic design for example – the answer is yes.  But for most managers and professionals, it’s simply not worth the time and cost, since it’s likely to get little traffic. Using existing free social networking sites is more effective and less time consuming.

And when you’re job hunting, you don’t want to spend too much time on the Internet, right? You know you’ve got to talk to people real time. Because you know that those conversations continue to be the single most productive activity for job hunters.

So it’s essential to integrate the use of Internet tools with traditional approaches. Internet tools are not a silver bullet. But when they are properly selected and used in combination with proven career transition methods, they definitely improve your effectiveness – and results.

That is a question that many job hunters ask on their first day in job search. For the majority, the answer is “no, don’t bother with tweeting.” But wait, don’t log off yet.

Let’s put it in context and look more carefully. In case you haven’t tried it yet, Twitter is a micro-blog that publishes messages that are shorter and more frequent that ordinary blogs.  Those “Tweets” are sent to your readers’ phones and computers, kinda like an instant message.

For job hunters, the central question with both blogs and micro-blogs is this: Who will read them?

With Twitter, you need to collect “followers” who volunteer to read your Tweets. It seems to me that you’re not likely to collect a whole lot of Hiring Managers inside of your targeted companies. Or even a whole lot of employees in those companies.

With a full-blown blog, the problem is exactly the same. If you know how to publicize your blog so it can be found among the millions of competing offerings, it could be a career and job hunting asset. If it is read by the right people. And if your content is useful to readers in your profession or industry.

The “if’s” are significant.

Unless you already have a following on Twitter or a successful blog, my suggestion is to forgo these approaches. There are many more productive areas where you can invest your job hunting time. Writing even micro-blogs is a time consuming process.

But reading blogs and Tweets is another matter.

For someone in job search, following Twitter feeds related to targeted companies can be useful. You can go to Twitter.com, search for the information you want by using keywords and sign up.

The same is true of full-scale blogs. Following the blogs of industry or professional experts can be useful for job hunters. Technorati.com is an easy place to go shopping for useful blogs. But writing a blog is useful only for the few who are strong writers and willing to learn the game of competing for readership.

What if you follow a number of Twitter feeds and some of the authors volunteer to follow yours? Well, if they’re the right people, it might be useful to tweet back now and then. For some people, Twitter can have some value as a social networking site.

But please, please don’t get too wrapped up in this stuff. The majority of job hunters still find jobs by talking real time to people they know and getting introductions from those “first generation” contacts to people at targeted employers. Blogs and micro-blogs can be useful tools. But blogs – and all the rest of the Internet – can also be the job hunter’s biggest time waster.

You Google employers. And sooner or later they will probably Google you. When they do, what will they find?

Sometimes employers source candidates on the Internet. Headhunters do the same. An even wider array of employers will check finalists on the Internet. So when you’re job hunting, your presence on the Internet, positive or negative, can make a difference.

If you haven’t already done so, please go Google yourself right now. I’ll wait right here.

OK, what did you find? What will an employer learn about you on the Internet? Will they find anything that confirms what you have on your resume? Anything that contradicts it? Anything that makes you look incompetent, dangerous, immature, or just plain silly?

Let’s start with negatives. If you found things that you posted that maybe aren’t what you want an employer to see, now would be a good time to take them down. Like those Facebook photos of you in a bar in New Zealand, maybe? Or the anti-Microsoft rant you posted in your blog. And while we’re at it, what impression does your e-mail name make? If you find incorrect or negative information about you posted by others, e-mail them and ask them to remove it.

What if you tried a number of different search engines and websites and found nothing about yourself at all? While that does no harm, it doesn’t do any good either.

Should you have a page on a social networking site, like Linked In? Yes. Having a page on a work-related site is essential these days, and you want to go with the sites most used by employment professions — and the ones that have the largest number of total users. A social networking site makes it easier for people to find you and check you out. It also helps you with your networking by giving you access to maps of the networks of other people you know.

Want to go farther?

I recently talked to an unemployed CIO who decided to start a blog during his job search. He’d never done anything like that before, but now he had time. He gave it some real thought and checked into other blogs. He decided to concentrate on topics inside of his profession.

He’s employed now. Did the blog help him find the job? We may never know. But, along the way, he got such a good reaction from other C-level executives — in and out of his field — that he decided to continue the blog while employed. It looked to me like he enhanced his reputation in the field, provided some free professional development for his readers and expanded the circle of people who are aware of his expertise.

Should everyone try this? Definitely not. It’s only for those who are established as writers and far enough along in their careers to be seen as experts. And you need to know how to get your blog noticed, since there are zillions of them. It’s all very time-consuming.

Which reminds me to add one more thing before I sign off:

I’ve talked to dozens of excellent career consultants who say that the Internet is the job hunter’s biggest timewaster. And I agree. So I want to be absolutely clear that I am not suggesting that you spend 10 hours a week reading and posting things on the Internet. But one hour might be an hour well spent.