Job Hunting Quicker

Over the last couple of years, social media has emerged as a potent tool in the armory of a job seeker. However, since it’s not a traditional job search method, not everyone is aware of its power when it comes to finding the right opportunity. This post is meant to educate the millennial and the elder generation of job hunters about the full effectiveness of social media, and how it can add an edge to their job search process that includes applying to jobs on portals or company websites.

We already know by now that social media come handy in job search. There are many ways in which you can use social media networking for job hunting.  Creating a LinkedIn profile, joining professional groups, calling out influences, networking with HR professionals of different companies and so on are just some of the usual methods that even a moderately educated and aware job seeker uses today.

However, the advanced job seeker utilizes social media to its full extent to find opportunities where there does not seem any. If you could tap into the immense potential that social networking sites offer, you could easily beat competition for any role, given that you have the technical acumen to get selected for that role. Here we discuss a few tricks that may give you the upper hand:

Publish on LinkedIn

Ever since LinkedIn allowed every of its member to publish long-form blog posts on its platform and get featured in the much coveted LinkedIn Pulse, professionals have got an outlet to showcase their knowledge and skills. While not every post you publish will be featured on Pulse, if it is well written and has all the necessary elements right, your article could be viewed by over 100,000 professionals who are there on the world’s first and only professional social network, many of whom are CEOs, CFOs and recruiters. The long form posts become a part of your LinkedIn profile and are featured right at the top below your essentials.

These posts can very well get you noticed by recruiters who are constantly scouting the profiles of experts in their respective fields. The best thing about these posts is that they are searchable both on and off LinkedIn and members who have come from Google search results can follow you to receive updates when you publish next.

Feature Non Profit Projects on LinkedIn

If you must have noticed LinkedIn gives you an option to list your volunteering experience. According to LinkedIn, 1 in 5 managers hired a candidate because of his volunteer experience. Thus, there is factual basis of the argument in favor of featuring any non profit experience or any volunteering roles you might have taken up in the past. You might have been ignoring this experience as of no use to the recruiter, but it tells a lot about you as a person and your passions.

Using Hashtags(#) and Facebook Groups

In addition to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter can also offer valuable insights into the prevailing job trends in different industries. In the past few years Twitter’s hashtags have emerged as conversation starters, and an indicator of the momentum of news and campaigns. Blinded by LinkedIn’s brilliance as a professional social network, many times people often overlook the usefulness of Twitter as a job seeking tool. There are a number of organizations that make use of the hashtag feature of Twitter to trend their recruitment drives.

Similarly, recruiters often post in Facebook groups, advertising open vacancies, or freelance positions. These groups also serve as a discussion room where a number of professionals can simultaneously ask questions and give answers, sharing their experiences and interview stories.

The beauty of this social network is the huge audience and reach that they command. Thus, even if you’re not an active job seeker, remaining aware of the trending hashtags can allow you to connect with prominent trends and professionals in the non-profit industry. This is the simplest way to start dialogues with influential people that might be of great help later on in your professional journey.

Optimizing Profile for Search

Effective SEO of your LinkedIn profile can help you attract more visitors. Recruiters use specific ‘keywords’ relevant to the industry and roles to search for better matches. LinkedIn, from its vast database of searchable profiles matches the query with the content of profiles and returns result of the most relevant profiles.  Thus, you can easily make your profiles more searchable by adding the relevant keywords which here means, the job titles and skills appropriate for your most commonly used in job postings.  Adding keywords in your job title and professional headline is most critical.