If your social networking goal is to find a job, you need to participate on the sites where the hiring is happening. You need to connect with recruiters. This seems obvious, but many people lose out on good opportunities because they just aren’t in the right place at the right time. It’s a given that recruiters from major companies use social networking and online searches to find suitable candidates. Make their job easier and increase your chances of success by making yourself easy to find.
The idea of being in the right place at the right time isn’t new. It applies equally to social networking as it does to in-person networking. The advantage of social networking, though, is that once you’re in the right place (and you’ve created a solid profile), you don’t really need to worry about the right time. Social networking sites make your profile available 24/7.
To establish an effective online presence, you need to create profiles on the social networking sites that cater to business professionals and enable you to network with recruiters and others in your field. For example, Catster (www.catster.com) may be your favorite social networking site, but if you’re looking for a job as a financial analyst, it isn’t the place to be.
Here’s a list of the top social networking sites for job seekers:
LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com)—. LinkedIn, with more than 19 million profiles, is a great place to network with hiring managers and recruiters. Nearly 100,000 recruiters have profiles on LinkedIn.
XING (www.xing.com)—. The dominant social networking site for professionals in Europe, XING continues to expand in other parts of the world.
85 Broads (http://secure.85broads.com)—. A career networking site for women who are graduates of a select number of universities around the world.
Yahoo! Kickstart (http://kickstart.yahoo.com)—. Career networking site for college students and recent graduates.
techTribe (www.techtribe.com)—. A social networking site that focuses on career opportunities for people in India that includes a recruiting referral service. Major Indian employers such as Oracle, Morgan Stanley, CoreObjects, and iGate recruit from techTribe.
Doostang (http://doostang.com)—. An invitation-only social networking site that began at Harvard, Stanford, and MIT and focuses on job networking. Companies including Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, ABC, NBC, Disney, and Google have hired candidates from Doostang.
Ecademy (www.ecademy.com)—. Ecademy is a 150,000-member business networking site that offers numerous networking groups based on your interests. In-person networking events are also available, but these are held primarily in the UK.
Ryze (www.ryze.com)—. Another business-oriented social site, Ryze has more than 500,000 members and offers a number of special interest networks.
Although not true social networking sites, ExecuNet (www.execunet.com), NETSHARE (www.netshare.com), and TheLadders.com (www.theladders.com) are three good fee-based professional job sites that include a networking component. Also consider Spoke (www.spoke.com), an open network of 40 million professionals at 2.3 million companies, which can be a good source of finding the contacts you want.
Finding recruiters on social networking sites is usually straightforward. By taking advantage of the site’s search capabilities, you can easily locate the recruiters who specialize in your profession or niche. Most are fairly open to direct contact from candidates with experience in the fields they cover. Solid search techniques can also help you hunt down key contacts at target companies, but making these connections through a common contact often yields the best results.
On LinkedIn, for example, you can use advanced search to view profiles of users whose current title is recruiter and who specialize in one of the more than 100 listed industries, such as civil engineering, investment banking, or human resources. Or find potential hiring managers by selecting a specific company or industry and filtering on only those who are interested in connecting with potential employees.
By developing a strong profile on the right social networking sites and ensuring that your contact information is current and accessible, you’ll be on the right path to finding the recruiters and hiring managers who can make a big difference in your next career move.