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Social Networks for Finding Work

Posted on 23. Apr, 2009 by Hector Aviles in Archive

The social networks thingy is spreading faster than a California wild-fire, and the scary thing is that we’re seeing just the beginning. But in this economy, social networks are rapidly becoming more than just a place to publish photos to share with family and friends which may live close or far. Social network sites are becoming the place of choice for finding work.

Since you are reading this blog, you are likely to be at least familiar with social networks, if not already member of Facebook. I work at Microsoft, so that means that I brush elbows with people that are technology savvy. However, most of my friends are not that involved in social networks. The ones that are, use mostly Facebook as a way to publish photos for friends and family to see. Only a handful of them use it on a daily basis.

Many people are using these social networks to find work. LinkedIn is a business-oriented network. It’s mostly all about work. Its an excellent resource to network and find old friends or ex-colleagues. You can post your resume, and LinkedIn uses the information you put in your resume to find people that currently work, or have worked in the companies you have worked, or went to the same college you went. Invariably, these results in you finding connections. These connections can add a “recommendation” of you, which will tip recruiters using LinkedIn. A friend of mine that was recently laid-off, contacted me via email to start his job search. When I asked him if he was in LinkedIn, he didn’t know what that was. After I explained how it can be used to help in his job search, he joined and has grown his network exponentially since joining. He even got a job interview, but didn’t get the job. Social networks are becoming like your new ID Card, online.

The connections made in these social networks are invaluable for locating work. People searching for a new job and consultants looking for new clients are all over these sites, and the reason is they work! They work because recruiters also visit or are members of the social netoworks as a way to find good candidates. In fact, people are using them so much for finding work, that this is become one of the main uses for them.

In future posts, I’ll go deeper into the use of social networks and bring you links to good articles. But if you just go to Live Search or Google and do a search for “facebook job hunters” for example, you’ll find a bunch of articles on using facebook for finding jobs. I’ll bring you some of my favorites later.

Tags: facebook, job hunters, LinkedIn, Microsoft, social networks, twitter