In an earlier blog post, I mentioned using social media to aid your job search. One of the major ways to do this is to have a professional profile on LinkedIn or other professional sites.
These days, the majority of recruiters and hiring managers use social media to search for the ideal candidate or to find out more about a candidate. However, your own company is probably among them, and you do not want your company to know you are looking to move on.
Most social media sites allow you to communicate with people privately and hide certain activities, which helps. You also want to be careful about posting even brief comments online that reveal your (a) dissatisfaction with your current job; (b) desperation to change jobs; and (c) continuous conversations with recruiters, hiring managers and competitors of your current company.
Aside from alerting your own company to your desire to leave, comments about your dissatisfaction and desperation are counter-productive to your job search. Companies are not looking to add unhappy employees to their staff. However, some hiring managers and recruiters are overjoyed to find a job seeker who will accept any offer just to get out of an intolerable situation. You may end up selling your talents cheap and to an employer no one else wants to work for.
Finally, you should approach your social media profile with the same care and consideration as your resume. Because social media sites have their own forms for professional profiles, your profile may not be absolutely identical to your resume. But it should be as close as possible.
You may want to have your profile professionally written, to make sure that you are delivering the strongest possible information about yourself in the space allowed. You want to be sure that your profile is:
- Clear, concise and accurate
- Grammatically correct and properly spelled
- Focused on achievements that set you apart from the competition
- Set up so hiring managers and recruiters can easily contact you
Robin’s Resumes® can help you achieve all that and more. Contact us today for a professional profile on social media.