Ensuring active and right presence on social media helps you advertise your expertise and converts your professional profile into a brand. By exploiting the power of appropriate social media platforms, you enable yourself to easily land your dream job.
Social media, today, exercises tremendous influence on our lives and is also deemed essential. This holds true especially when it comes to searching for the right job, as many companies now consider it a great channel to find potential candidates.
A recruiter may prefer to directly jump to your LinkedIn profile rather than first going through your resume. So, merely having a profile on social media never works, and to sustain in the talent competition, you need to strategically maintain your presence.
Understanding the overwhelming importance of social media and the nitty-gritty involved in job searching, we bring to you the most crucial 5 tips for using social media in the job search.
5 tips for using social media in your job search
Brought to you are the most crucial 5 tips for successfully using social media to all your advantage in your quest to find the dream role.
Maintain a good LinkedIn profile
LinkedIn has now become a gold standard for most organizations to judge your candidature. Right from SMEs to Fortune 500 companies, companies look seriously at the strength of your LinkedIn profiles.
Around 87 million millennial professionals are there on LinkedIn, of which around 11 million are decision-making executives. And with recruitment specifically, a staggering 87% of HRs now use LinkedIn to screen prospective candidates’ profiles. So a good LinkedIn profile makes a difference in you making it and not making it.
Most importantly, LinkedIn advertises jobs to which you can directly apply. The recruiter looks at your profile to check if you possess the required skill sets. And hence, a good LinkedIn profile matters.
Expand your network
Having social media presence makes sense only when you have a good network of professionals who can prove useful in your career progression. So, you must evolve your network by continually connecting with the right people.
Social media platforms are highly dynamic; every single day new people add and many update their profile. Not necessarily every time it has to be only LinkedIn, which will help you in your job search. Presence across diverse social media platforms opens doors to endless possibilities.
The bigger the network, the higher the exposure to the updates you get in your area of work. For instance, when you follow multiple Twitter handles, you keep yourself updated about the emerging trends.
Join online communities in your niche
One of the best ways to accelerate your job search is to join multiple communities. Platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook have special groups, which you can join to get regular updates.
The greatest advantage of being in a community is that you can directly connect with the concerned person to evaluate your match for the role. Moreover, being a part of a community offers you an opportunity to actively participate in discussions. It thus increases the value of your profile in the eyes of recruiters who are keeping a keen eye on active members.
Even communities that enhance your skills also help you discover the right job. For instance, if you are an AI professional, you must join an AI community that creates a holistic scope – job search and knowledge gaining – for you.
Establish your identity
Mere social presence won’t do if you don’t make your profile stand out. You might have worked on a very ambitious project and have derived excellent results. Your recent research might have got published and its practical implementation might bring tremendous gains for companies.
You need to showcase your expertise, highlight your achievements and make your skills visible. Senior recruiters and CXOs are particularly keen on how candidates have laid out their profiles.
LinkedIn allows you to seek recommendations from your superiors with whom you worked in the past. The permanent character of these virtual recommendations makes them more valuable than what you might have received traditionally.
Interact personally
Joining a social network is the very first step, and building a good network is the second. Connecting personally is the final step that completes your existence on a social media platform.
You can use LinkedIn to send personal messages to HRs and managers, explaining the roles you are aspiring, and requesting them to assist you. And when you are interacting personally, remember the person you are talking to might care about even comma placement.
Even while sending connection requests over LinkedIn, personalize the message so that you have a good chance of getting your request accepted. Using effective messages, you can build good relationships with potentially helpful connections.
Social media-led job search, a new norm
Through effective communication and activity on social media, you can enhance the value as well as the visibility of your profile. To stand out from competitor candidates, a good social media presence is as vital as having a good resume.
You shouldn’t limit yourself just to certain known platforms, but try to tap in as many as you can. Using forums and communities actively ensures that you are getting closer to your objectives and are boosting your candidature.
