Skip Job Boards and Use Social Media Instead

LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and blogging are much better tools for finding jobs that speak to your passions than job boards and corporate Web sites, says Dan Schawbel

By Dan Schawbel

If you rely on job boards or corporate Web sites for your job search, you'll find yourself unemployed for a very long time. Instead, look to your networks, both in real life and in the virtual world. A recent Jobvite survey reflects this evolution in recruitment, noting that 72% of companies plan to invest more in recruiting through social networks. By using LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as your own blog, you have more outlets to communicate your personal brand and find a job faster than the competition. Here's a look at how you can best use these tools.

LinkedIn: The most obvious social network for corporate recruiting is LinkedIn, with more than 40 million professional member profiles across all industries. There are literally thousands of recruiters searching for passive talent—those who are employed and not actively seeking a new position—as well as job seekers who are leveraging the network to find available positions. Rick Mahn, a passive candidate, landed his current position as a social media strategist at Land O'Lakes when his LinkedIn profile came to the attention of a corporate recruiter, who reached out to him through their mutual contacts. Chad Levitt, an active job seeker and college graduate, landed his current job as a sales associate for EMC without even submitting his résumé. "I cut the virtual line and found the recruiter I needed for the job I wanted," says Levitt.

Before you attempt to use LinkedIn for a job search, be sure to construct a flawless profile that will impress recruiters. The most important section of your profile is your "professional headline." This will automatically be your last or current job unless you change it. Use this headline to position yourself for the job you want, using keywords, not the job you have. For example, instead of putting "Sr. Auditor for Ernst & Young," you could say "Internal Auditor for Fortune 100 Companies."

Also, obtain your unique LinkedIn URL, so that it appears as http://linkedin.com/in/yourfullname. To do this, go to your profile, click "edit," and then next to where it says "public profile," click "edit" again. At the top you'll want to click "edit" one more time next to "your public profile URL," and then type in your full name, without spaces, and click "set address." If that unique URL is already taken, try using a period between your first and last names or use your middle initial. Then make sure you complete your entire profile, get recommendations, join groups both locally and globally, and make sure you always keep your profile information up to date.

Blogging: What do you do when you're trying to stand out from the hundreds of millions of unemployed Chinese graduates and the thousands of Chinese-speaking foreign job seekers? You blog! Joel Backaler did just that when he started blogging on TheChinaObserver.com, and his blog was eventually linked to by The Wall Street Journal on several occasions. That visibility helped him secure his latest full-time job—within four months. The blog showcased Joel's credibility as a China specialist and was leveraged as a conversation-starter during job interviews. "My blog allowed me to demonstrate my knowledge and understanding of the Chinese marketplace, which separated me from my peers and helped me land a job," explains Backaler, who currently does Asia-Pacific business development for Frontier Strategy Group.

Recruiters can gain a better understanding of an individual based on a blog, compared to a résumé that has the same boring standard fields, such as experience and education.

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