”;
Unfortunately, many job seekers, having heard or read about job search
success stories from LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and other social
network users, dedicate all of their time and energy to social media and
not enough time to all the true job search essentials. They then end up
being less effective and successful in their job search, but don’t know
why they aren’t seeing any results. For the most part, social media
will: Help you increase the reach and visibility of your personal brand;
help you make new connections; and help you identify new job
opportunities. It won’t, however, replace or diminish the importance of
the following five job search assets: Personal Brand
Before you do anything online to build your personal brand, you first
have to create one and be able to communicate and support it through
your offline actions. Write down your differentiating strengths (those
that make you stand out from the rest) and ask your friends, family,
colleagues and managers to do the same for you. Identify the top three
to five overlapping strengths that both represent you and support the
career direction you want to pursue. Once you have these, create/find a
word or phrase that can become your personal brand and that represents
these strengths. Then, develop a short, supporting pitch that can follow
your brand, describing your strengths in more detail. Resume
Before you can add your resume to your social and professional
networks, you need to have one that could get you the job offline. Think
about the direction you want to pursue and the experience and
transferrable skills you have. Search online for industry relevant
sample resumes and consider consulting a professional resume writer to
help you optimize your resume with the right keywords and information
for both human eyes and online resume search engines. Self-Presentation
How you present yourself in your social media profile photos means
nothing if you can’t be just as well-dressed, well-groomed and confident
in person. People do judge a book by its cover, so practice making good
first impressions in all of your in-person networking. Interview Skills
Social media may link you to someone who can help get you an interview
for a position, but again, how you present yourself and how you sell
yourself in the interview will determine whether you make it to the next
round. I recommend both getting practice through informational
interviewing, as well as through introducing yourself to new people at
networking events and at other gatherings. It may be tough or
uncomfortable at first, but once you do it a few times, presenting
yourself and your personal brand will seem like nothing when it’s time
to do it in your job search. Follow-Up Skills Following
up with your interviewers, informational interviewers and any
networking contacts, whether it be via phone, mail or email, is
important not only because it looks professional, but also because it
keeps you top of mind. Why else do you think career experts recommend
sending thank you letters after your interviews? For your informational
interviewers and networking contacts (those not already tied to a
specific position for which you have interviewed), make sure you ping
them from time to time to keep up to date on opportunities you have
applied for, possible internal opportunities they may know about, as
well as opportunities for you to help them based on your conversations
and any challenges they may have been facing. All of these will take
practice and some time to perfect, however, if you already have or can
begin working on these assets, social media will become a much more
effective tool in your personal branding, networking and job search
efforts.
Article Tags:
Social Media, Personal Brand
Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Perry, MBA, is a Gen Y brand and marketing generator, brand marketing manager, career search and personal branding expert,
professional speaker, entrepreneur and brand consultant. Chris is the
founder of Career Rocketeer, the Career Search and Personal Branding
Network, MBA Highway, the MBA Job Search and Career Network and multiple
other ventures. Learn more about Chris on his website: http://chrisperry.me
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