By Sebastian Cowie,
The jobs market has become increasingly more competitive in the economic downturn. Job candidates need to utilise all the resources at their disposal to make a great impression. Naturally, you must ensure your CV is as impressive as possible, carefully detailing your skills, experience and expertise.
However, your CV will make you more attractive to prospective employers if you integrate your social media profiles into it. Companies are using social media for job screening with greater frequency, so ensuring your profiles provide the right information to seize employer attention and adding prominently displayed links to your CV is a crucial step to take before applying for a new position.
Create a Landing Page or Use Your Blog
Employers will regularly Google your name to check your online presence. This means you must ensure that all your social media profiles give a good representation of your character, experience and interest. An excellent way to put these all in one place is to create a landing page using a service like flavors.me which has all your social media profiles prominently displayed.
If you have a blog you should include links to your social media profiles there. This will give employers the opportunity to check your online presence more easily and this transparency will make them look upon your application favourably. Remember to add a link to your personal landing page or blog onto your CV.
We spoke to How2Become regarding the integration of social media into your CV’s and they suggested that before contacting a potential employer, you vet your social profiles. Paying particular attention to Facebook photo’s as potential employers won’t want to see that tattoo you don’t remember getting on your last holiday to Magaluf.
As of August 2012, LinkedIn had 175 million members and 2 million company pages. It is an invaluable professional networking tool that must be used to its full potential by all job candidates. Ensure your profile is up to date and truly showcases your experience and skills. Try to get recommendations from your past employers and join business specific groups to show how engaged you are with the sector in which you work. Place a link to your LinkedIn profile on your landing page or blog and the URL for whichever you use on your CV so that your prospective employers have a single route through to all your social media profiles, including those below if you have them.
With more than 1 billion users, Facebook is blurring the line between personal and professional spheres. This can be dangerous if you don’t restrict what is posted onto your profile. It is often a good idea to have separate personal and professional profiles. There are Facebook job apps like Glassdoor, BeKnown and BranchOut which can aid you to build up a strong professional network and this will look good to potential employers. Post examples of your work, for example if you are a graphic designer, and engage in online discussions relating to your business sector.
Twitter now has more than half a billion users. Much like Facebook, it can be used to establish your authority by engaging in online discussions relating to your business sector and build a strong professional network. However, as with Facebook, it is important to restrict what you tweet on your profile to ensure it is suitable for the eyes of potential employers. You can also tweet links to work you have successfully completed if relevant and to blog posts you have written on business specific topics.
Google+
While Google+ has been rather slow in the uptake it is still a valuable social media platform for job candidates and shares the networking strengths of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Your Google+ page can also be used as an effective landing page if you don’t already have one. Use it as you do your other social media profiles. Engage with professionals in your business sector and express your opinion and demonstrate your knowledge on trending topics within your profession.
