LinkedIn is not the ONLY vital social media platform for job searches.

Using Multiple Social Media Platforms Increases Chances of a Job Seeker’s Qualifications Being Noticed

Lately, many collegiate level courses teaching Internet, business office software packages, and general computer technology has included a unit on LinkedIn and resume writing to enable students to job search.  Many tech-based recruiters are also searching for unique places to find job candidates.  This means the 21^st Century job seeker needs to cover all the bases, and ensure their resume or curriculum vitae is branded in more than job boards, but also in multiple popular social media platforms.

LinkedIn is vital for job seekers, as well as business developers, as a method of branding oneself as a ‘Subject Matter Expert’ in one’s industry or field within a B2B platform.  The addition of the social media section to profiles, to upload documents (docs, spreadsheets, presentations, and links to videos), quadruples the enrichment of the profile and enables demonstrations of job candidate capabilities to recruiters.

Facebook is primarily considered a B2C platform, and exposes a profile to family, friends, and acquaintances.  A job seeker could use this platform to increase their Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Privatize your personal page to ‘friends only’ viewing, and then create a ‘business page’ for a career search.  There are plenty of fields to complete for the ‘about’ section, point of contact information, availability, and a short resume pasted into the ‘more about’ box. Many recruiters perform searches for job titles, key words, gender, employers, and schools (and is comparable to LinkedIn’s powerful search engine).

Twitter is a severely underutilized source for job searches. Using vital key skill words as a teaser within a 140-character profile – can get you noticed. Recruiters are now tweet new job posting URLs immediately after upload a new job description to websites. They search within Twitter for profiles with key words to tweet the job announcements directly to potential candidates.  Following recruiter’s or searching for job openings via Twitter can get you ahead of the competition.  Searching within Twitter for key search words, such as: job openings, recruiting, job opportunity, or the job title itself, will bring up hundreds of ‘freshly’ posted announcements. It’s productive to start following as many recruiters as possible when looking for new career positions.

WordPress (WP) blogs are an opportunity to post your resume on the Internet for the universe to see. Posting a ‘page’ and a ‘post’ within a free WP blog improves SEO for the job seeker’s skills. The key to posting within a blog and getting noticed is to use ‘tags’ feature to post key skill words for the recruiter’s Boolean searches. WordPress is only one available blogging platform. Other blogging sites are available and free; the more you use, the higher the odds you will get noticed.

Pinterest is the newest and most popular social media platform, and you can create bulletin board ‘pins’ (use your headshot, or a screen capture of something related to your field or industry) with a back-link to your online resume (blog, LinkedIn profile, Facebook professional page).  This primarily increases SEO, but your key skills, a headshot, and a back-link improves odds of being caught in a Google search.

Google+ is an important social media platform for recruiters, including providing job seekers the capability to build a personal profile that showcases capabilities, as well past employers (with job descriptions), and developing a rich profile. Many recruiters now search directly within Google+ for job candidates, using key words such as ‘resume’ or ‘curriculum vitae.’  Job seekers need to have a Google+ account!

Craig’s list might not be considered a social media per se, but it’s amazing how many employers search for job candidates within this platform. Post your resume to get the SEO for vital key skill words, and remember to refresh the post every 30 days.

If you are capable of creating profiles on social media, and loading files and photos, then it is important to use these available, and free, public relations tools in your career search. If you don’t have the computer skills to create profiles and post resumes or career information, then look for a social media manager who does have the skills to get you noticed ‘on the net’ for that next career position.

Dawn Boyer, Ph.D., owner of D. Boyer Consulting – provides resume writing, social media management and training, business development, and human resources consulting. Reach her at: Dawn.Boyer@DBoyerConsulting.com or https://dboyerconsulting.com.