Using Social Media Platforms As A Job-Hunting Tool

Social Media has become a big part of our lives. Every day we send out millions of tweets to our friends and celebrities, post to Facebook walls and share photos of things we are about to eat, ensuring we are connected with the world on a constant basis.

But what about using that constant as a tool in your job-hunting journey? Think about it, businesses will want to be heard – whether it’s about products they sell, events they will be involved with and, of course, vacancies that they will require filling.

There are three social media platforms which it is useful to be signed up to when it comes to looking for a job, as you’ll find businesses with a presence on there as well:

• LinkedIn – an all-round resource for companies and staff to network, useful for building a profile of yourself and your skill set to be searched by potential recruiters.

For many businesses, this is the ideal platform for showcasing their products and achievements, but they may also have vacancy sections where the latest job opportunities will be posted.

If you can’t find vacancies on their page it can still be worth dropping your CV over to a head of department by searching for details in their ‘contact info’ tab.

• Twitter – many businesses will have a Twitter account for announcing promotions and new products. So while it’s a great medium for finding out about the latest offers in your local coffee house it can also be a fantastic tool for finding job opportunities.

Recruitment companies will also have a presence to attract potential clients. It can be worth following a few of these, especially those which focus on specific locations, so it can be worth looking local in these instances.

• Facebook – companies reach out to customers and clients using Facebook, usually to announce competitions or to gather opinion about specific products directly from a customer point of view.

Some will even have vacancy announcements on their walls, or have specific sections of their page where they will list vacancies, as well as that all-important contact information for where to send your CV.

When setting up an account on Facebook or LinkedIn it’s important to remain professional in order to give a good impression to potential employers, especially as we live in times where people can be found through Google searches.

Same with Twitter, having a personal account with a witty username is fine, but try and tailor a more professional username based on your name for the purposes of jobhunting.

For keeping up to date with your tweets while you’re spending time searching for vacancies it can be worth making use of a desktop application such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, these allow you to sort tweets into groups – such as from certain usernames or hashtags (try using variations of #jobs or #careers combined with sectors during your search.

Hopefully the above guide will help you gain some new inspiration with searching for your next job and you’ll be able to embrace the powers of social media. If you’ve found our guide helpful, please leave a comment below.