For Job Seekers Online to Learn about the Rules of Engagement
There are no job seekers online today who don't realize how important it is to work the social networks. Still, there are many who don't really appear to have taken to heart yet the rules of how to really make the right impression when online. For these people, here's a primer.
Whatever you do online, you need to think of an off-line analogue for the activity. When you enter a social networking site or a group on a site for the first time, if you have your unemployment on the brain, it is quite likely that about the first thing that you fire off will have something to do with your job search. What you need to do is to look around you when you enter a new place on a social networking site. Are there any other job seekers online at the moment talking about how anxious they are about finding something new? If there isn't, you probably shouldn't be the first one. What is expected of you when you enter a social networking site is that you be social. What you can do is to play it cool, to hang out and perhaps offer some advice or help to the other members - with no expectation of a reward. Job seekers online should always remember that they need to actually belong to a place in the social networking universe before they can actually start sending out feelers for that job that's on their mind. It's the same as it is in the real world.
You hear quite a bit about how you don't want to put any personal information online, to better be able to protect your privacy. While that is true to an extent, job seekers online would get much farther if their social networking profiles offered relevant details about them. Showing up on a professional social networking site with zero information offered about yourself, it's just considered abrupt and non-commital. What you want to do when you go on LinkedIn or on any of these other websites is to do whatever it takes to have other people be interested in you. If all you have on Linkedin is your resume, there will be nothing to tell you apart from the hundreds of other people there who have the same qualifications and the same kinds of work experience. You want to give people more reasons to be interested in you. Would you believe that companies routinely check your Facebook page to find out what kind of person you are - the kind of music you listen to, the kind of books you read - to try to learn something about your character? They feel that they can tell more about the kind of fit you will be in their organization if they know something about your personality. You need to give them that information. And you also need to give yourself the best chance of making a few friends. If there is some out-of-the-way book that's a favorite with you that some other well-connected person really loves too, that could be your way of connecting with that person. Why would you deny yourself that opportunity?
