which tools to use linkedin-twitter-youtube
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The Web offers countless ways to help or hurt
your job search. How can you tell the dif-
ference? We spoke to job seekers and hiring
managers who have used the Web in their
job searches, like technology analyst Randy
Giusto (who used Twitter to keep publish-
ing his research and analysis) and David
Gordon Schmidt (who posted a video resume
on YouTube).
DOES ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION trump thehuman touch when it comes to professional net-working?
The fact of the matter is, networking is still based on
the same social conventions that have already gotten youthis far in your career: etiquette, focus and organizationstill carry the day, whether youre meeting contacts at tradi-
tional mixers or via social-networking sites.
The biggest change (and challenge) is the potential scope
of your networking efforts when the entire Web can be
applied to your job search. Cast your net too wide, and youmay dilute your efforts and waste precious time.
In this package, business writer Kevin Fogarty talks tohigh-tech job seekers and consultants about how candi-
dates can use the Web without nding themselves tangled
in distractions.
The most important thing is to have a strategy, consul-tant Paul Gillin told Fogarty. You cant put the tool rst;
you have to know what youre looking for and then use
the tool whether its Twitter or LinkedIn or Plaxo oranother service to help you get there.
Working with a NetBy Matthew Rothenberg, Editor-in-Chief, TheLadders.com
What did you think of this package? Got a story of your own to tell? Have ideas for future coverage? Please write Editor-in-Chief Matthew Rothenbergat [email protected].
Post-Merger, HR VPs Network Pays OffPage 2 Is Your Status Update Still Looking for Work? Page 5
IN THIS PACKAGE:
NETWORKING
Above: Social sites like Facebook, YouTube, LinkedInand Twitter provide job seekers with new ways to send amessage to potential employers.
See SOCIAL NETWORK Page 2
Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube:
Which Toolsto Use
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ALAYOFF IS NEVER EASY. Nevertheless, if your previ-ous job was focused on studying the maze of social-net-working sites and guring out how to use them best, youd be
way ahead of the game.
At least, Randy Giusto hoped
he would. Until April, the vicepresident and research director at
market-research rm IDC was in
charge of a group of 40 analysts.
They brought in more than $15 mil-
lion per year by creating reports that
measured, and often changed the
direction of, huge markets in con-
sumer and digital media.
The shock of his layoff left
Giusto without an immediate plan.Most jobs are gotten through networking knowing people,
talking to people, and a big percentage of that today is done
through social networking as well as in person.
Like millions of other out-of-work executives, Giusto found
its hard to separate online and ofine networking in 2009.
After all, we now rely on online job boards, social-network-
ing sites and mobile devices to make connections. Knowing
people, talking to people, and nding and capitalizing on job
leads, now takes place largely online.
Industry-specic and social-networking tools
Giusto started close to home. He
signed up for groups on LinkedIn
that focused on market research,
consumer electronics, mobile and
other technology areas in which
he had some experience, and for
groups formed by recruiters hed
worked with in the past.
Members of the groups alerted
him to a series of job openings
that had either been posted only
in inaccessible places or not atall opportunities in the background job market that he
would never have seen without a connection to specic parts
of the industry, in which hed worked for years.
Vertical-market groups and networks really have become
one of the most effective, most reliable sources for that kind
of job information, according toPaul Gillin, author ofThe
New Inuencers and Secrets of Social Media Market-
FROM THE TIME RICK JOERS got thenews that his employer, JP Morgan,would be acquiring Bear Stearns, he sensed
that he might be working toward eliminat-
ing his own job. At the same time, he was
too busy helping to merge the two compa-
nies to do any serious work on his resume
or start a job search.
Joers, a vice president of human resourc-
es at JP Morgan for the past eight years,
started working toward a layoff on a Sun-
day afternoon last year. My boss called me
in on Sunday, March 16. I worked until 1
a.m. that day on the acquisition. It was the
start of a six-month project. I knew even
then that there was a chance I might not
have a job when the merger was complete.
But we were working long hours; there was
a lot to do. I didnt have time to do my work
and search for another job.
Indeed, he got word by June that he would
be losing his job, and on Sept. 15, he left JP
Morgan. Compounding his concern about
looking for a job was the fact that, at the
age of 58, he had not done a job search in a
very long time. Id always had headhunters
Post-Merger, HR VPs Network Pays OffRick Joers knew his HR role at JP Morgan might disappear when he nished helping the company acquire
Bear Stearns. When the ax fell, Joers had to nd new networks in a shrinking industry.
By Sean Gallagher
Gillin
4SOCIAL NETWORK
Giusto
Joers
http://twitter.com/randygiustohttp://gillin.com/http://gillin.com/http://paulgillin.com/newinfluencers/http://paulgillin.com/newinfluencers/http://paulgillin.com/newinfluencers/http://ssmmbook.com/http://www.theladders.com/job-searchhttp://www.theladders.com/job-searchhttp://ssmmbook.com/http://paulgillin.com/newinfluencers/http://paulgillin.com/newinfluencers/http://gillin.com/http://twitter.com/randygiusto -
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ing, and tech-industry veteran/consultant who specializes in
social-network marketing.
A lot of people think they dont have the time or expertise to
use industry-specic or at-large social-networking sites, Gillin
said. But if you make yourself savvy, and its not hard, in how
to use Plaxo and LinkedIn and Twitter and vertical networks,
you can do a lot. He focused his job search on one: Twitter.
When he was at IDC, Giusto maintained a Twitter feed where
IDC customers could follow his analysis of industry issues in
the news. He realized he could leverage this and show his value
to potential employers by compiling and analyzing information
for his followers.
That kept me in contact with a lot of people who (had)
sought me out. People (were) saying they didnt have any open-
ings right now, but offering or raising the possibility of some
consulting work that might last through the summer, and (say
ing) we could talk more in the fall, Giusto said. Especially inJuly and August, when the number of job postings went way
down, I built a network of people with different specialties
could turn to on a freelance basis to fulll some of the more
complicated engagements.
This push strategy on Twitter resulted in most of hi
job contacts coming to him, rather than vice versa. Mostly
they came through Twitter or they
searched on LinkedIn for people
with certain skills and found me that
way, he said.
Start with a strategy, not a tool
Too many job seekers approach
their social networks the wrong way
when theyre looking for a job, said
Ellen Gordon Reeves, author of
Can I Wear My Nose Ring to the
Interview and consultant/career
coach at the Columbia Publishing
calling me or someone from my net-
work calling me about jobs, he said.
I hadnt had to actively search be-
fore. So, I had to start from scratch.
Joers said the outplacement rm
he worked with put a lot of empha-
sis on networking, which, in a more
sane economy, made sense, he said.
But I was worried, in this market,
networking would take too long. The
nancial-services market was quicklyconsolidating. The people I was talk-
ing to were also losing their jobs. I
knew I couldnt just use my profes-
sional network.
So, he said, he thought about differ-
ent ways to attack the market and de-
termine what he could offer employ-
ers. At the same time, he decided to
open up his search to Northern Cali-
fornia as well as New York.
I did a lot of work in mergers and
acquisitions and global organizations.
I had some expertise in employee re-
lations, he said. So I started looking
at companies other than nancial ser-
vices that could use those strengths.
And, last fall, my partner was work-
ing for a company based out of So-noma. So my strategy was to target
my search in Silicon Valley, because
one of my major projects had been
supporting global technology.
New networking channels
He didnt have any professional
contacts in the San Francisco Bay
area, but he did have a network on
LinkedIn that he tapped: The Gay,
Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender group
had many members who were pro-
fessionals in the technology eld. He
was surprised at how many people
were willing to talk to him. People
were very responsive and helpful, he
said. I met a lot of people through
LinkedIn and talked to them about
moving into technology.
At the same time, Joers became an
HRLadder member, hoping to nd
job listings in the Bay area. I set alerts
for Northern California and New
York City, and targeted my search in
those two locations, he said. Youve
got to have a lot of quivers and a lot
of arrows to hand.
ReevesRandy Giustos Twitter feed.
http://ssmmbook.com/http://www.journalism.columbia.edu/cs/ContentServer/jrn/1175372207611/page/1165270091617/simplepage.htmhttp://www.journalism.columbia.edu/cs/ContentServer/jrn/1175372207611/page/1165270091617/simplepage.htmhttp://ssmmbook.com/ -
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Course a six-week, graduate-level training
program on magazine and book publishing.
Some just march right out and broadcast, I
need a job. Can anyone help?
Desperation creates paralysis, she said.
People get a whiff of desperation, and it turns
them off, for one thing. When people feel outof control, theyll say theyre happy to do any-
thing. When you say that, theres nothing in my
brain (as a contact) that I can use to help you.
I have all these networks and contacts and re-
sources, but if I dont have a clue what youre
looking for, I dont know how to help you.
When you approach people like that youre ask-
ing the helper or potential employer to do the
digging to gure out how to help you.
The best approach is the same direct-contact,
web-of-trust method used in more traditional,
in-person networking, Gillin said.
The most important thing is to have a strat-
egy, he said. Ill go to events that people go
to with the express purpose of networking
for jobs and they havent even thought about
how I can help them. You cant put the tool
rst; you have to know what youre looking for
and then use the tool whether its Twitter
or LinkedIn or Plaxo or another service to
help you get there.
You have to stop looking for a job, and star
looking for a person, Reeves agreed.
If you ask a roomful of people how they
got their jobs, 80 percent will say it was
through some kind of referral. So you have tostop sending your resume into the black hole
of cyberspace, and use the tools to research
and nd the companies and the job youre in
terested in and the person you should talk to
about that job. Then you use social-networking
tools to make that contact happen.
Examples of good
strategies in action
That backdoor
approach works re-
markably well, ac-
cording to Aliza
Freud, CEO of She-
Speaks.com, a word-
of-mouth marketing
startup that enrolls
women in a coop-
He went to San Francisco in late
October to meet with several people
he had met on LinkedIn. And, while
people were eager to talk to him, he
realized the Northern California mar-
ket (and the technology eld speci-
cally) was going to be a tough nut to
crack. I was trying to sell myself as
someone with a unique skill set, but
right now, if you didnt have direct
experience with a technology com-pany, most companies didnt want to
talk. The job market in California
had slowed to a crawl in November,
and his partner realized he wouldnt
be able to transfer there, so Joers
decided to steer his focus back to
New York.
And back to nancial services.
While on Sept. 15, I thought there
was no way I could nd another job
at a nancial institution, it was begin-
ning to seem like that would be the
best place for me, Joers said. Those
were the people that were most re-
ceptive to my resume.
Traditional networking channels
In the end, his network camethrough for him. A recruiter placed
an ad on TheLadders for a position at
the Royal Bank of Scotland. I con-
tacted the recruiter, and they called
me the next day, he said. I went
on LinkedIn, and a woman who had
done consulting for JP Morgan when
I was there was now working at RBS.
I e-mailed her that I was applying for
a position at her company; she wrote
to tell me that the position reports to
her. Since she was the most inuential
decision maker, it was helpful to have
someone who knew me.
Several rounds of interviews begin-
ning in November ended with a job
offer in January. He is now technical
partner at Royal Bank of Scotland,with oversight of employee relations.
His new job, based in Stamford,
Conn., requires him to commute over
an hour each way, but hes happy to
be working and to have found a job
as quickly as he did.
If you ask aroomful ofpeople how
they gottheir jobs,80 percentwill say itwas throughsome kind ofreferral.
Ellen Gordon Reeves,
author, consultant/
career coach atthe ColumbiaPublishing Course
See SOCIAL NETWORK Page 6
Freud
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L
ATELY IVE BEEN READING A LOT of status updateson business and social networking sites that say things like
Project Manager professional looking for work or Lookingfor work in a tough economy or Just received my degree
in accounting looking for work. While I understand thatthese job seekers are trying to advertise their candidacy online,I dont recommend broadcasting this specic message in your
status updates. Heres why:
1. Blasting this message to your entire network makes
you look desperate. You might as well rent a billboardto promote your job search...yes, I know there are sto-
ries about people landing a job this way, but these tacticsget old fast. (And by the way, the guy who landed a job
by wearing a sandwich board saying he was looking forwork is so 2008.)
2. Posting this message makes people in your network
uncomfortable. Imagine agreeing to meet someone forcoffee and before the coffee is even cool enough to drinkyou say, Im looking for work. Its awkward. It places
an unrealistic expectation on your contacts to come upwith a solution for you. The same thing happens onlinewhen you announce that you are looking for work.
3. Sending this message leaves you little wiggle room
for a follow-up message. Think about if. If you are stil
in a job search next week, what will your status updatebe? Still looking for work isnt going to cut it.
Status updates on business and social-networking platformslike Facebook and LinkedIn are a way for you to build rap-
port with a community and deepen the relationship withyour contacts. Chose messages that showcase your expertiseshare valuable information, give kudos to others or broad-
cast an exciting endeavor you are working on (even if it isvolunteer work).
Here are some examples of alternative status updates youmight want to adapt for your situation:
For a fundraiser executive:
Volunteering at the American Cancer Society walk-
athon on Sunday; hope to raise more than $2M.
For an HR professional:
Attending a seminar on compensation plans for 2009
and beyond at (share the link)
For an advertising professional:
My colleague, John Smith just landed a major accountwith a leading luxury goods company. Way to go John!
For a CIO:
Reading an interesting article on new technologies inhealth care at (share the link)
For a nancial analyst:
Boning up on study materials for the CFA Level IIexam...looks like its going to be a long night!
Create status updates that invite questions and further conversation, not ones that make your network run for cover
Remember, online networking, like face-to-face networking is a process. Whenever possible, give before you get andyou will be surprised how quickly you get something backin return.
Barbara Safani, owner of Career Solvers, has over twelve year
of experience in career management, recruiting, executive coaching, and
organizational development. She is a triple certifed resume writer and
author of Happy About My Resume: 50 Tips for Building a Bette
Document to Secure a Brighter Future.
Looking back, hes glad he gave some other options
a try, but in this economy, he is better off staying in
something he knows. It would have been fun to take
the plunge and go to San Francisco, he said. I had
a six-month severance, but it was going to take more
than six months for me to nd something there. And
I didnt want to tap into savings.
And while his two-pronged strategy made sense, he
said he learned to not underestimate himself or his
skills, even in this tough economic market. I had the
mistaken belief that there was no way to go back to abank or nancial-services rm because of what was
happening in the market, he said. The power of
your resume, especially if you have built a career in
the market, should not be overlooked. My global ex-
perience was very helpful, and my employee-relations
experience and M&A experience. In the end, it worked
for me.
Is Your Status Update Still Looking for Work?By Barbara Safani
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erative effort to make their voices heard to developers of the
products they use.
Example 1: One candidate Freud recently hired got noticed
by searching SheSpeaks.com to get familiar with the companys
approach, and also following Freuds own Twitter feed to gain
a better perspective on my thinking and hot buttons (as a po-tential employer), Freud said.
Example 2: Another researched the company and then used
LinkedIn to nd connections who could make the recom-
mendations that helped make the candidate stand out among
hundreds of candidates and eventually land the job, she said.
Using video to put you in the spotlight
Without a direct link to a company a contact who knows
the hiring manager or can introduce you its hard to
get noticed.
It is especially difcult in industries where there have
been so many layoffs that theres a crowd for every oppor-
tunity that crops up, said David Schmidt, a Michigan-based
MktgLadder member and 20-year PR and marketing veteran
who specializes in manufacturing technology and IT-related
professional services.
Not even professional associations are exempt from the glut.
The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), in which
Schmidt has been active as a member and speaker, is so packed
with job seekers that its job boards generate the same over-
whelming ood of resumes as more general sites, he said.
One way to get noticed is to use an innovative bit of technol-
ogy or marketing, like a video resume. Schmidt, who lost his
management job two months ago when his agency went out
of business, recorded and posted a
three-minute resume he believes can
highlight his skills and experience,
give an idea of what hes like to
work with, and maybe even attract
attention a text resume wouldnt. As
an appendix to his video resume, he
also produced a short tutorial on
Web 2.0 practices, available on his
YouTube account.
Youve got to try anything you
can to set yourself apart, Schmidt said. Im only getting
started with this and a couple of other approaches, but its a
new way to get an edge and can impart more about my person-
ality and some of my video and producing skills.
New technology strategies like Schmidts can produce results
or waste a lot of time depending on the person produc-
ing and the picture that gets painted. It can be ineffective for
people who are not making their message clear or presenting
a consistent picture of themselves in all the social media they
use, Gillin said.
What I tell people is to pick LinkedIn or Plaxo or whatever
network youre most comfortable in; get all your information
up to date, and tell people clearly what youre looking for. Then
make that prole the one you update with new information,
Gillin said. Take that information and syndicate it to the other
networks you use Twitter or Facebook or whatever butuse one as the base to work from. It saves a lot of energy and
not only avoids having you look completely different on each
network but confusing people.
Aliza Freuds LinkedIn profle.
David Schmidts video resume
Schmidt
4SOCIAL NETWORK
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Narrow your focus, and your sources
The general job boards are full of junk, so you have to nd
the ones that lter some of that out, according to Schmidt,
who uses MktgLadder and follows several Twitter feeds to nd
job leads.
One problem is that Twitter with its tweets and retweetsand tweetups is alien-sounding and overwhelming to the
uninitiated, said Rick Stomphorst, a director of operations and
development at Econstruction.com who is highly rated by the
LinkedIn community as an expert on the use of social net-
works.
A huge number of new jobs are posted through Twitter, but
the number of feeds is so enormous that its hard to nd them,
he said.
One option is to identify a small number of companies you
want to work with or recruiters who work in your industry,search for the Twitter feeds of executives from those com-
panies, and follow them. You learn a lot about their priori-
ties and methods, often hear about their job postings rst,
and get yourself instant credibility as a longtime follower of
their tweets.
Corporate social networks
Finding job listings is one thing; nding them credible is
another, said Kate Lukach, director of marketing for Select-
Minds, which develops software that companies use to create
their own social networks.
SelectMinds has become one of the leading software pro-
viders for social networks owned and controlled by specic
companies and organizations, like alumni associations and
industry groups.
When a company implements this closed network soft-
ware, job seekers get a good source of job leads at a company
where theyre already a known commodity, so it improves their
chances of landing a job. And it drastically cuts the cost of
recruiting, vetting and training new employees, Lukach said.
Internal, corporate social networks compete with less con-
trolled, sometimes less focused alumni networks or social
networks such as LinkedIn, Ning.com and others. But theyre
qualitatively different, Lukach said. Each users real name
(not a made-up user name) and work history is accessible via
hyperlink when they comment within the closed network. This
all but guarantees members behave as if theyre in a company
conference room, not on the wild Web, she said.
Too many options
Using Twitter, LinkedIn, video, e-mail, IM and a host of
tools, aggregation sites and other information-gathering mech-
anisms can jump-start a job search, but each one also comes
with a cost, according to Schmidt.
Some of the new services and techniques are more effective
than others. And each one comes with a learning curve.
Its still the Wild West out there, but the resources you can
nd are getting so deep and rich you can do amazing things,
Schmidt said. The challenge becomes which ones are worth
the time to invest, because you cant ignore personal con-
tacts and phone calls and just sit in front of the computer
all day.
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