Social media can be a really useful tool in helping find a job; the majority of employers and recruitment agencies use social media to help source candidates and it’s also a great way to search for potential positions.
At Jigsaw, we often use LinkedIn to search for potential candidates and contact them directly. It is essential that your LinkedIn profile is up to date and really ‘sells’ yourself. Here you can note your certifications, endorsements from managers/colleagues/suppliers and accomplishments. This will make you stand out among other applicants. Although a social networking site, LinkedIn is much more professional than Facebook and Twitter so don’t forget to keep your profile photo strictly professional.
In addition to making your profile stand out, it’s a good idea to follow companies’ pages that you’d like to work for, or recruitment agencies’, so that you can be the first to know when they have a new job opening. You can follow our LinkedIn page here to keep up to date with our latest vacancies.
The site also has a dedicated jobs section where job seekers can search based on the job type, function, title and experience level. We advertise all our vacancies on LinkedIn so it’s certainly a good place to start looking.
70% of employers use social networking sites to research candidates. Make sure there are no incriminating photos or offensive status updates on any of your social media profiles. Also, change your privacy settings to ensure that your private life isn’t open for everyone to see. 1 in 3 employers admit to rejecting candidates based on something they found about them online.
Adding that you’re ‘actively searching’ for a position to your social networking profiles will allow recruiters and HR managers to see that you’re open to new positions. You could even consider posting a status to tell everyone know that you’re actively searching for a new job- you never know who might come across it!
Overall, social media can be an extremely useful tool nowadays in helping secure a new position. That being said, it can work to your disadvantage if an employer comes across something they don’t like on one of your profiles; so keep it private and remove anything offensive.
