Work on the net
Social media have long evolved from being a mere showcase to becoming a powerful personal marketing and recruiting 2.0 tool. If you only use Facebook to upload your selfies, read on…
LOOKING FOR WORK? Use social media wisely
- Clean up your digital traces and get rid of inappropriate pictures or tweets on your profile. You may also create a specific profile for professional purposes.
- Create your own personal brand: upload the best profile picture, use key words and streamline your contents on the different media so that they tell the same story about you.
- Optimise and complete your profile with more information than required (links to projects, reference letters, etc.).
- Engage accordingly: follow your favourite companies and visit their websites to stay updated on their latest developments.
- Spend time on becoming an expert on networks like LinkedIn and get to know their possibilities beyond uploading your CV, such as participating in groups.
- Don’t be passive: update your profiles, don’t keep them with incomplete or outdated information.
- Avoid mentioning on social media any negative aspects of your professional life, past or present.
- Don’t write a standard statement for all your job applications. Be original and personalise each one.
- Spelling mistakes and terrible sounding expressions are definitely off limits. Watch your manners, also on the net.
LinkedIn is the most popular network with jobseeker
Whether you’re looking to actively search for a job, or simply to put your professional ‘self’ out there, you can’t ignore social media. That’s where the world of work is: your digital identity matters, and a lot, to most recruiters. As Rosana Fernandez, HR director at Room Mate Hotels, explains: “technology has opened up a huge window allowing us to save costs and, above all, to see what profiles are there on the market and which of them are more active and up to date”. Not just Rosana: according to a survey by Jobvite portal, up to 93% of those in charge of selection processes go on the Internet before making a decision. What do they want from you? To dive into your professional experience, contacts, examples of previous work, your cultural context…
LinkedIn is clearly the lead on all the process phases (CV search, contact, pre selection), followed by Facebook and Twitter. In any case, the key is “not to confuse visibility on social media with that digital identity you must prepare carefully if you want to land a job. Optimise your use by uploading the right content on each of them, so that recruiters may easily spot the requirements they’re looking for”, Rosana explains. And watch out, for your great allies may quickly be used against you: open profiles with inappropriate contents, critical messages or an unfortunate picture may close the doors to your dream job. And if that job is at Room Mate Hotels, Rosana knows what she wants: “fresh people showing their interest with an innovative and surprising CV”. What are you waiting for to log in?
Real Case: Aránzazu Castillo, Community Manager in Room Mate Hotels
She knows all about looking for work on social networks… How do you think she got to be Community Manager at Room Mate Hotels?
I found the job offer to work at Room Mate Hotels on Twitter. Combine the “job” hashtag with that of the position you’re looking for (“#communitymanager” in my case) and the city where you want to work (#madrid). It really helped me to have my CV as a PDF with links to the social media where I’d published some articles…. Don’t be shy! We get private messages from people wanting to work with us everyday. In fact, job offers are some of the most shared contents.