The Digital Makeover of Professional Networking
At some point, everyone will have to conduct a job search, and it is no secret that the best way to find a job is by networking. In today’s digital age, social media has taken professional networking to a whole new level with the various tools, sites and applications available. These can not only aid in facilitating a job search, but help professionals build and market their personal brands – whether they are currently seeking employment or not.
An April 2009 BGS survey regarding Society members’ professional uses of social media revealed that 56 percent of the more than 3,000 respondents use social media for professional purposes. Among those who use social media for networking, LinkedIn was the most popular tool (82 percent), followed by Facebook (52 percent).
“LinkedIn is a great tool for keeping current with contacts, understanding their prior employment history, requesting recommendations and seeking out other potential contacts based on shared network experiences,” said Kalliopi Lekas (BGS 1995, New York University), LinkedIn member and an independent consultant who advises organizations on issues related to business strategy and organizational effectiveness.
With 38 million members around the world and executive members from all Fortune 500 companies, LinkedIn is the largest of all the professional social networking sites. Like most of these sites, members are required to complete a profile but are encouraged to list their professional and educational experience.
Essentially, when building your LinkedIn profile, you include the same type of information you would on a resume. However, Christophe Masiero (BGS 2004, Kennesaw State University), LinkedIn user and Americas partner, general manager and global large account director-Accenture at Orange Business Services, recommends not posting too many details, like sales figures, since the information is available to the public.
Once you’ve filled out a profile you can begin searching and connecting to friends, colleagues and former colleagues by adding them to your network. Masiero, who has been a member of LinkedIn for more than four years, has found the community to be a helpful resource for re-establishing contact with people he’s worked with who have either changed contact information, names or jobs. For example, when Masiero wanted to get back in touch with a former colleague he sent an email to the person’s company address. It wasn’t until the email bounced back that he realized they had changed jobs. Surprisingly, shortly after, the person found him on LinkedIn.
In addition to staying in touch with friends and colleagues, LinkedIn can also be useful for conducting a job search and building your personal brand. Thousands of recruiters and HR hiring managers are members of LinkedIn and use it for applicant screening and to search for talent. According to a survey of more than 31,000 employers released by CareerBuilder.com in September 2008, more than one in five hiring managers said they search social networking sites to screen job candidates, and 34 percent of those managers said they found content on these networks that helped convince them to hire a candidate. Hiring managers said profiles that had a professional image and valid references can help improve a candidate’s chance for a job.
On LinkedIn’s “best practices” page, it suggests you include relevant keywords on your profile so you are easily searchable and findable. LinkedIn also advises soliciting credible recommendations and endorsements from those within your network, such as current and previous employers and colleagues. The recommendations are displayed on your profile and can help establish your reputation on the network and attract the attention of potential clients and employers.
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For job seekers, LinkedIn can also facilitate contact with a recruiter or potential employer. Instead of, or in addition to the standard methods of inquiring about a job, such as filling out an online application or sending a resume to a black hole email address, you can also try searching for appropriate contacts on LinkedIn to see if a person in your network is directly connected and can help put you in touch.
Social networking sites such as LinkedIn can be great ways to establish your professional online presence, but some have found other social media tools to be valuable as well.
Christine Adolf (BGS 2007, Florida International University), a marketing professional with experience in social media marketing, is taking full advantage of the online tools out there. She is a member of various social networking communities such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and has recently created a social media resume (SMR) using Google Sites, a web page creation service.
SMRs are a new trend that can be utilized for any industry. SMRs contain all of the same information you would include in a traditional resume, but allow you to add links to your other online profiles and/or blog and incorporate multimedia elements such as relevant audio and video. Adolf’s social media resume includes her work history, educational experience and links to her various social networking profiles.
“I am also going to create a YouTube video and discuss my career goals and experience and put that on my social media resume,” said Adolf. She also plans to take up blogging.
“Blogging is sort of the new resume,” said Adolf. “You can tell recruiters about your blog and people can see what you know and what you think.”
Paul Paetz (BGS 2005, Mercer University), CEO of Innovative Disruption, a marketing consultancy firm, and vice president of marketing at Ethoca Limited, an online fraud-fighting community for Internet retailers, has found blogging to be quite successful for building his personal brand and establishing credibility, thought leadership and marketing his company. Paetz’s blog, “Disrupt This”, focuses on his area of expertise: marketing disruptive technologies. And in case you’re wondering what a disruptive technology is, it’s a marketing term for an innovation that improves a product or service in ways that the market doesn’t expect, typically by being low-cost or designed for a different group of consumers. An example would be the introduction of the Ford Model-T.
“I’ve had a couple of very fortunate breakthroughs on my blog,” said Paetz. The first, he said, came when he made a comment on his blog in reference to a published memo from the CEO of Starbucks about its company culture. His post got linked to about a 100 other blogs and to various magazines, including Bloomberg Businessweek. “I literally had thousands of people visiting my site,” said Paetz. Before that, he said his best post maybe drew only a few hundred visitors.
His next breakthrough came more recently, prior to the debut of the iPhone after writing a blog post titled, “The day before the iPhone Introduction.”
“That sent me into the stratosphere,” he said. “There was an article in The Wall Street Journal with Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, and the CEO of AT&T, and I was linked to that article and several others.” On that day, if someone would have typed in “Steve Jobs” and “iPhone strategy” his post would have been the No. 1 search result, he said. “I had thousands of people coming to my site that I would call qualified business leads.”
As a direct result of that article, Paetz said he was invited to present a keynote address at the International Marketing Congress in Europe.
“That was a pretty clear connection between social media and the business result.” Paetz said he really hasn’t had to spend anything on marketing his consultancy and almost all his business comes from referrals and networking.
“I never actually finished my website,” said Paetz. “And I never needed to because my blogs were more important. There was enough to talk about from my blogs and people could get a sense of the way I think – the website doesn’t add much.”
Whether you’re in the technology or marketing industry or not, Paetz says it is important to establish an area of expertise and interest, and the best way to do that is through social media.
“You can think that something is the most interesting thing in the world – write about it,” said Paetz. “A, you’re establishing that you understand it. B, you may learn something while you’re doing it, and C, you’re helping people. Social media is about engaging and helping other people. If you’re focused on helping yourself, you lose. If it’s about helping the other guy, they’ll help you.”
While social media may allow you to professionally network and build your personal brand it is also important to manage your digital identity.
“If someone is actually considering hiring you, someone is going to Google you,” said Paetz. “The question is do you control what they find? Or do they randomly see what they find? Or do you not show up at all? That says something about you too.”
For Noble Acuff (BGS 2007, University of Southern California), principal technology consultant at The Acuff Group, a professional services firm, having an online presence was a priority. “In my industry, not having an online presence is like going on a job hunt without a resume.”
Acuff said he made a decision five years ago to put more profile information online as a consultant because he wanted people to easily find him and learn more about his consulting practice. But, he said, “It’s very important for people to consider what information they are sharing. Many younger professionals may think of social networking in the same context they did in college. Once you move into the professional world it’s very important to consider who your audience is.”
There have been numerous cases of “unprofessional” online conduct that not only reflected badly on the individuals but also on their employers. For example, one job applicant received some unwanted attention when she posted on Twitter in March: “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.” The post spread like wildfire on the web and became a media sensation. And needless to say, she didn’t end up getting that “fatty paycheck.”
For now, social media etiquette is probably best learned through the blunders of others and by using sound judgment, as no formal rules seem to exist.
“I took a class on personal branding but there weren’t any courses offered in social media,” said Adolf, who graduated in 2007. “It is so new, there have been a ton of mistakes. I think people need to be careful, but it is all common sense."
