Social Networking for Career Success Using Online Tools to Create a Personal Brand: Foreword
Social Networking for Career Success Using Online Tools to Create a Personal Brand: Foreword
When the economy hit the skids several years ago and people started losing their jobs right and left, I was astounded by the number of people who had no clue about how to find a job.
One man told me the last time he had looked for work he had simply picked up a copy of The New York Times, circled a few ads, made some phone calls and voila! He had a job. But looking for a job through Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn? He admitted he didn’t know the first thing about social networking.
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As the bad times stretched on, I talked to dozens of unemployed people for my USA Today syndicated workplace column who were beginning to panic, and began lurching into the social networking arena with all the grace of Bambi on ice. They sent out mass LinkedIn requests to people they didn’t know, looking more like online stalkers than qualified professionals with valuable skills to offer. The employed were just as worried. They fretted about losing their jobs, so they decided to make some equally clumsy forays into the online world. There were half-hearted attempts to update LinkedIn profiles and sometimes idiotic tweets where they called the boss an ass and shared the fact they had a hangover from too many Jell-O shooters the night before.
For the jobless and the employed, venturing into the online social scene wasn’t always pretty.
Unfortunately, things haven’t improved all that much since the economy went in the toilet. Yes, employers are hiring again- slowly-and fewer employees feel like they’ll get a pink slip any day now. But that doesn’t mean all the important lessons have been learned.
Job seekers still tweet about the bad breath of an interviewer and don’t expect to be caught doing it (they get caught-they always get caught). Workers, exhausted by the daily grind, haven’t added any- one new to their online networks for the last eight months. In writing about workplace and career issues for more than 20 years, I’ve heard just about every excuse in the book as to why people mess up in their careers and job searches. But one thing I know for sure-excuses won’t get you a job or a promotion, and employers have even less patience than before for the ones who can’t get their act together.
Source: Miriam Salpeter, “Social Networking for Career Success,” Learning Express, LLC, New York, 2011
Republished by Marketing Now
