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Is Is Facebook affecting your job search? You’d better believe it!

I recently polled my Free Job Tips Newsletter members to understand how job seekers were using social and professional networking tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

I also wanted to understand what job seekers were doing with social networking sites; including, what was working during their job search, and what wasn’t.

The results of the poll, suggest that job seekers don’t understand the impact of their social networking activities on their job search.

The results of the poll were as follows:

When asked if they were using social networking tools in their job search, the results were as follows:

  • 75% of respondents said they have a Facebook account, yet only 9% are using it for their job search.
  • 57% of respondents said they have a LinkedIn account, and 36% are using it for their job search.
  • 24% of respondents said they have a Twitter account, but only 6% are using it for their job search.

The survey clearly shows that job seekers understand the benefits of using social networking sites like Facebook to keep up to date with friends and family members. It also shows that a majority of job seekers have a LinkedIn profile, and a majority of those users are using LinkedIn during their job search, in some form or another. The twitter results are what I would have expected. Twitter isn’t specifically a ‚Äújob search‚Äù or ‚Äúnetworking‚Äù tool, and as a result, is still on the fringe.

The fact that 75% of the respondents have a Facebook account, and yet only 9% of the respondents ‚Äúthink‚Äù they are using Facebook during their job search suggests that job seekers don’t understand how employers are using social networking sites.

Job seekers ‚Äúthink‚Äù that they aren’t using Facebook in their job search, yet they aren’t locking down their Facebook profiles from outside users like employers. For instance, the default security setting for updates on Facebook is ‚ÄúEveryone‚Äù. And ‚ÄúEveryone‚Äù doesn’t just mean your ‚Äúfriends‚Äù or ‚Äúfriends of friends‚Äù, it means the entire Internet, including employers. So, unless you have modified your security settings, each of those little updates might already be publicly visible. Facebook security settings are convoluted, difficult to understand, and constantly changing. As a result, most Facebook users aren’t updating their security settings. (In another post, I’ll spend more time explaining each of the Facebook privacy options.)

In a 2009 study from CareerBuilder.com, 45% of employers stated they were using “social networking sites to confirm or deny a candidate a job offers”. An additional study from CareerXRoads in 2010, suggests that even more employers are expecting to use social networking sites during the recruiting process in the 2010.

At this point, I think it’s safe to say that if you’re applying for a job that requires managing people, relationships, sales, or technical expertise, you can bet that employers are doing a thorough social background check on you during the application process.

The survey results also seem to show that while 57% of the respondents stated they had a LinkedIn profile, only 36% of the respondents, stated they were using LinkedIn during their job search. It seems like job seekers don’t understand that LinkedIn is the new FREE Resume database for employers. If you want to be found by employers, you need a LinkedIn profile. Employers have tighter budgets and therefore are not spending the $9,000 per user license to access the resume databases of major job boards, like they did a couple years ago. More and more recruiters are using sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter where they can search profiles of members for . They have more and better candidates, and basic accounts are free!

My interactions with job seekers confirm what I think these results are showing… job seekers are assuming that their social profiles are just that, social, and they aren’t being viewed by employers. Unfortunately, that’s a really dangerous assumption.

While there have been numerous highly publicized cases where employees were fired, or new hires were called out because of their social networking posts (ie. CiscoFatty), the mass majority of job seekers don’t understand the importance of their social profiles.

Employers are watching and don’t seem to know or don’t know what to do about it.

If you’re a job seeker and are still wondering how LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter are affecting your job search, or are a little confused about how it all works, subscribe to my free job tips newsletter. I regularly post articles about recent job search strategies.

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LinkedIn Twitter App Review… Maybe or Maybe Not!

Last week, LinkedIn, announced some new updates that let’s users connect their LinkedIn connections with their Twitter connections.

In theory, the application sounds great.

You’ve done all the work at building your LinkedIn Connections.

You jumped on Twitter, to start building your personal brand, or keep up to date with companies and news, etc.

The only problem, you have all these contacts in LinkedIn, and you don’t have the time to find and follow them on Twitter.

There are 2 specific new functions that I think are Excellent…

  1. You can quickly see which of your LinkedIn connections HAVE¬† added the Twitter app to their LinkedIn Profile. This is really important when you are trying to make contact with your connections, or possible employees in companies during a job search. Having a quick link to find their Twitter account, and then connect with them is great. (Note, the app will only show your connections who have added the Twitter Application to their LinkedIn Profile, NOT all of your connections who use Twitter. It does not search Twitter and find your connections, and their twitter accounts… that would be cool, but probably not going to happen any time soon.)
  2. Create Dynamic Twitter Lists, based on your LinkedIn connections. This makes a lot of sense, especially if you are actively building your brand with LinkedIn and Twitter. If your connections are on LinkedIn, it’s a pain to find them all and then try to add them to a specific list on Twitter, and then maintain that list. The new LinkedIn Twitter app upgrade will do this for you… That’s what’s so cool about it… at least I thought.

This Sounds great… but it doesn’t seem to work.

Granted, I have over 10,000 LinkedIn connections, and over 5,000 Twitter followers, and this might have been part of the problem.

However, you would think that they might do a little alpha or beta testing with some LinkedIn and Twitter power users, and then say the App is in Beta, and give users a way to send specific responses about how the application is working (or not).

I keep getting a response saying: An error occured. Please check back later or try refreshing.

Problem is, I tried it at least 10 times, at different times through the day, on both low usage times and more moderate usage times, for both Twitter and LinkedIn, and from servers on multiple continents. The results were the same..

My suggestions to LinkedIn: “Try Refreshing, or Check back later”...

I’ll keep you posted on how good their customer support is… especially for a power user, who teaches people how to use LinkedIn, and have over 10,000 connections.

You can also follow along, by connecting with me on LinkedIn, or by following me on Twitter:

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/JonathanDuarte
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JonathanDuarte

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10 Reasons LinkedIn is the New Monster

I’m sure this isn’t much news to many people in the recruiting community, but this article is for job seekers.

1. You can’t get fired for creating a LinkedIn Profile.

You wouldn‚Äôt upload your resume on Monster and then send an email to your boss and co-workers saying ‚ÄúI just put my resume on Monster‚Ķcome take a look!‚Äù That would be job suicide. On LinkedIn, it’s different. LinkedIn is a smart professional decision. Uploading your ‚Äúresume‚Äù on Monster, means you‚Äôre looking for a new job. Creating a LinkedIn ‚Äúprofile‚Äù shows that you understand the importance of building professional relationships and that you are up to speed on Professional Networking online.

2. LinkedIn is Free for Job Seekers and Recruiters.

Monster charges $9,000 per company employee, per year, for access to YOUR resume! In fact, Monster makes something like $1 Billion annually from selling your resume to employers. LinkedIn does it for free! LinkedIn does have many paid upgrade options, but these are only optional and they are not required to get most of the functionality.

3. Recruiters are flocking to Linkedin and canceling their Monster accounts.

With millions of people unemployed, employers are getting hundreds of applicants for every job posting. Finding candidates isn’t a problem, like it used to be. As a result, fewer companies are buying resume database licenses. With tighter budgets, recruiters are being forced to use alternatives, like LinkedIn, that are free. When the economy starts turning around, employers and staffing firms are going to continue to use the most effective and least expensive tools to find candidates. LinkedIn will only get better.

4. LinkedIn is a virtual “Corporate Employee Directory”.

The LinkedIn, “Company Search Feature” allows job seekers to view loads of great information about thousands of companies. A search could reveal your 1st degree and 2nd degree contacts who are current or past employees, employees that share similar groups, like professional trade groups, and alumni organizations. LinkedIn boasts employees from all of the Fortune 100 companies, a statement that Monster can‚Äôt make.

As a job seeker, if you’re trying to connect with employees in the company, to find a possible employee referral, a simple LinkedIn company search might just do it. While LinkedIn doesn’t provide direct contact information, if you are a savvy LinkedIn user, you can definitely find ways to connect and contact just about anyone on LinkedIn.

I’m releasing an online training series Referrals Get Hired!, that teaches job seekers how to find and connect with employees and ask for referrals. If you are interested in getting notified of when I release the training, put your name and email in the box to the right.

5. LinkedIn is the largest and most active online community of human resources, staffing and recruiting professionals.

LinkedIn claims over 500,000 recruiting and HR members. From my estimates, that means that LinkedIn has 10 times more staffing and recruiting members actively engaging candidates than paying members of both the Monster and CareerBuilder resume databases, combined!

As a job seeker, if you want to research, or find, or contact a recruiter, there is no better place, they’re all on LinkedIn. They’re easy to find – do an “Advanced People Search”, with the word “recruiter” in the “title” field. You can even filter the results by your local region, and industry.

Recruiters are also very active in LinkedIn groups. So join some industry trade groups, as well as any of the large “job” and “career” oriented groups, and connect with them.

6. Recruiters are sourcing more and more candidates from LinkedIn.

Everyday I talk to another recruiter, or see another testimonial, where an executive recruiter says they are finding and placing more candidates from LinkedIn than any other source. This is good to know, but it must be stated that these are “executive recruiters” hiring senior managers and executives. LinkedIn isn’t yet the “go to” resource for all types of positions. In the next couple of years, we’ll see this continue to move out of the executive ranks and into operations and line management positions, as LinkedIn membership grows beyond its primary “professional” demographics.

7. LinkedIn has already become a defacto “social reference check”.

Over 45% of employers have already stated they are using LinkedIn to run background checks on applicants (2009 CareerBuilder study), and another 35% say they will be doing so this year (CareerXRoads, 2009 Source of Hire Study). Recruiters never used Monster for this because Monster is only one dimensional, meaning recruiters could only read what a user uploaded, their resume. Profiles on LinkedIn are multifaceted, including recommendations, links to blogs, twitter applications, providing recruiters with many more ways of researching candidates. In addition, LinkedIn is constantly being updated with new information in Groups, Questions and Answers, etc. whereas, Monster is very static.

If you are looking for a job, it’s critical that your LinkedIn Profile matches what is on your resume, and vice versa. Recruiters are using the information they find and comparing it to your resume. If there are holes, or your resume doesn’t match, or other questionable issues come up, employers might us the information they find to disqualify you. If you‚Äôre not listed, or your profile isn‚Äôt complete, or doesn’t match your resume, you‚Äôre out of luck.

8. LinkedIn Search Engine Optimizes your profile for you.

When your profile is complete, LinkedIn lists your profile in it’s public directory, which makes it easy for Google to index and list your profile in their search results. Monster; however, locks down your resume and charges recruiters to view YOUR resume. If an employer doesn‚Äôt want to pay‚Ķ you are the one that loses. LinkedIn helps market you, because it’s good for them. LinkedIn knows that recruiters are not just searching Linkedin.com for candidates. Many recruiters search Google as well.

Tip: Have you ever typed in your name into Google and found your LinkedIn profile? That’s because LinkedIn is trying to make its content, profiles, available for the public.  They do a great job of it.

9. LinkedIn isn’t just for posting a profile and looking for jobs, it‚Äôs a professional community.

Monster’s singular purpose is to help employers and job seekers find each other. That’s fine, but if you’re not looking to find a new job, there is no reason to go to Monster. LinkedIn, however has over 60 Million members, many of whom are actively involved in some of the largest and most active professional, trade, and alumni groups on the web. As more and more users come on board, LinkedIn only gets better. It’s a community, based on community built content.

10. Employers would rather hire “Passive” candidates.

While this isn’t news, it’s a strategic difference between Monster and LinkedIn. Monster is considered a great place to find ‘active’ candidates. Whereas LinkedIn, because of its community basis, is a great place to find passive candidates. Again, uploading a ‚Äúresume‚Äù on Monster, by definition, means you are an ‚Äúactive‚Äù candidate.

The purpose of this blog post was to help define why LinkedIn is so vital to a job seeker. I truly believe that LinkedIn is now more important than Monster, for a lot of reasons. That doesn’t mean that job seekers shouldn’t use Monster or any other job board, including GOJobs.com, the job board that I own. They should, because job boards have loads of job postings, employers use them everyday, and as a job seeker, you need to use any and every tool that can help you find a job.

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#1 New Year’s Resolutions ‚Äì Find a Job!

If you’re one of the 15 Million Americans out of work, chances are you’re first New Year’s Resolution might be ‚ÄúGet a Job!‚Äù.

In a must read, Free Ebook, from Polly Pearson and the recruiting team at EMC, 100 Tips from Fortune 500 recruiters, outline the their top job seeker tips and top mistakes they see job seekers making.

EMC Recruiter Tips

In the Ebook, 10 EMC recruiters listed their tips to each of the questions.

I did a little work to summarize the responses into some “Top Tips”, based on the number of times a tip or similar tip was repeated by a recruiter. A summary is below:

Top Job Seeker Tips
# 1 Job seeker tip- Networking!
9 out of the 10 recruiters stated that networking, in it’s different forms, was one of their top tips for job seekers. Networking came in multiple flavors from traditional networking on online and social networking, to using sites like LinkedIn, FaceBook, and Twitter.

# 2 job seeker tip – Being Prepared!
8 out of 10 recruiters stated this as being one of their top tips. When the recruiters stated “being prepared”, this included things like having researched the company before the interview, being prepared for the interview (ie, having practiced the most common interview questions), and showing an interest in the company by coming prepared with and asking questions about the company, the department, and the job, in the interview. This of course dove tailed into the following:

Biggest Job Seeker Mistakes -“Not being prepared in the interview”
Based on the above, its’ easy to understand why 10 of 10 recruiters mentioned being prepared as one of the biggest job seeker mistakes. Being prepared also included understanding how to interview, and having a clear objective or reason why you are interviewing for the position.

Word to the Wise… If you want to stand out in the interview, it’s really easy… Be Prepared! (I guess the old Boy Scouts motto is sill relevant!)

Recruiters Favorite “Sources of Hires” РReferrals and Social Networks.
Again, unanimous, 10 of 10 recruiters stated that Referrals or Social Networks were listed in the top tips from each of the recruiters. The favorite sources included everything from job fairs, employee referrals, college career centers, job boards, social networking sites, like LinkedIn, FaceBook and Twitter., etc. What’s interesting and important to note is that job boards were only mentioned in the 4 of the 10 recruiter’s top sources.

The 17 page Ebook has lot’s of great tips and quotes, here are a couple:

Linda Di, “There is no “best” candidate but “best suitable” candidate. A successful outcome for both the company and the candidate is to find out if they are the best match for each other.”

Michelle Flynn, “It will always be the preference of the hiring manager to recruit someone who is known to them. Give yourself the advantage by being a person to them, rather than a [resume].”

Liz Liptrot, ‚ÄúAll people experience what you are going through [as a job seeker]. Whether it is your first job search, you have been hit by the recession, or you are just looking for another career ‚Äì we have all been there. Don’t be embarrassed by your situation and network with anyone and everyone. Remember that most positions are filled through referrals.‚Äù

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Social Media Recruiting- Is your company saying “We don’t care!”

You NEED a Social Strategy! Even a basic one!

Your top recruits are already using sites like LinkedIn, FaceBook, and Twitter.
They’re out there looking for you!

What are they finding?

We are here!
We are a great company to work for!
Come, see for yourself!

or

We don’t get it!”
We don’t care!”

Even if you have a company presence on LinkedIn, Twitter, or FaceBook, Do you know what it says? Or who wrote it?

Social Media Recruiting is “Social”. (That’s the hardest part to understand)
It’s not about writing the bigger check than you competitors.
And, it’s not JUST about how many hires you generate. It‚Äôs about getting your message out and engaging your Top Recruits, on their terms, on the sites they use, how they want it, when they want it.

It’s not about writing a check to the site with the best ads on the SuperBowl! Or most aggressive sales people.

What good does it really do if you have a $20,000 “Branding Presence” on a national job board, when you know your Top Recruits never visited those sites?

What’s you message on FaceBook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, where your Top Recruits are? Do you even know?

If you don’t have a social strategy, don’t be surprised when it gets harder and harder to attract and retain to top candidates.

At the moment, social media sites may not be the primary driver of candidates applying for jobs, but they can definitely make the difference during the “Why Work With Us” phase of recruiting.

Social media sites like LinkedIn and FaceBook are quickly becoming the go-to portals for all kinds of information, including company information, product research, consumer reviews, etc. LinkedIn now even embeds company information from BusinessWeek and CNBC into company profiles.

A poorly planned, duct-tape social media recruiting campaign might have worked in the past, but the competition is quickly starting to heat up. Top employers like Starbucks, Addidas, Ernst & Young, and McGladrey are all using social media in their recruitment marketing.

If you know your Top Hires are individuals that know your company, products, clients and markets, and even your existing employees, don’t you think these are the candidates you should be spending the most resources on?

This is what Social Media Recruiting is all about. If you engage and help educate your Top Recruits, you stand a better chance at getting their attention. You can do this with social media… or you can just say “We don’t care!”

Unfortunately you aren’t going to get a phone call from some FaceBook sales rep, who for $25,000, will wave his wand and make the problem go away.

You need to know what to do. Where to start! What sites should we be on? And what are the best practices that others have implemented.

This is where having the help of an experienced and knowledgeable consultant can help you get the ball rolling.
• Someone who has 10+ years in the Internet Recruiting Industry, so they know the ropes.
• Someone who knows LinkedIn, FaceBook, and Twitter, and has a proven track record.
• Someone who knows technical web design and how to integrate job postings into multiple websites.
• Someone who know how to build, implement and maintain a social media marketing strategy.
• Someone who knows how Social Media and Search Engine Optimization can be used to build a social recruiting brand.

I highly recommend starting with a 3-6 month pilot project. It’s easier to digest, you and your recruiting team get to learn the sites, and your recruiting message is clear. From the pilot project, you can then decide which social campaigns make the most sense to you and your recruiting team.

If you are interested in learning more about creating a Social Media Recruiting Strategy, please give me a call, or send me an email at jonathan @ Gojobs.com.

While there are a few Social Media Recruiting experts out there, there just aren’t that many.