Social Networking for the New Job Seeker

Facebook, one of the largest social networking sites in the country with 175 million users, connects "friends" from around the world and allows them to digitally share their lives. The site is so popular many faculty members and university administrators have joined its ranks.

Listed below are some new ways to look for work through the social networking tools online;

Conduct a 3 - step people search instead of a job search

1. Identify the top five companies that you would like to work for. You want to brand yourself, not just as the person of best fit for a job, but as someone who is eager and ecstatic to work for the company.

2. Use search engines to track employees that currently work there. Over 130 million people have created blogs in Technorati, a blogging site catering to business professionals. You can search through them to possibly find someone who works at one of your top five companies. You can search through corporate groups, pages and people on Facebook. You can even do the same on Twitter. Then there are people search engines such as Pipl, Peek you, and Wink. Once you find a contact name, try Googling it to see if there is any additional information about that person.

3. Connect with the person directly. Social media has broken down barriers to a point where you can message someone you aren't friends with and don't have contact information for, without any hassles. Before you message a target employee, realize that they receive messages from people asking for jobs all the time and that they might not want to be bothered on Facebook, where their true friends are. As long as you've done your homework on the company and the prospect, tailor a message that states who you are and your interest, without asking for a job at first. Get to know them and then by the 3rd or 4th messages, ask if there is an available opportunity.

The new approach is about building a powerful personal brand and attracting job opportunities directly to your doorstep. How do you do this? You become a content producer instead of just a consumer and the number one way to do that on the web is to launch a blog that centers around both your expertise and passions.

You need to be passionate to be committed to this project because it requires a lot of writing, creativity and consistency in order for it to actually help you. A blog is a non-intrusive, harmless and generous way of getting recruiters interested in your brand, without you even asking for a job! Make the recruiters like you and only send you opportunities that are related to your blog content.

By pulling recruiters into your world, you are able to impress them with what you want them to see and they can make a quick decision whether to hire you or not, without you hearing about rejection. Start a blog today using Wordpress.com (for beginners) or install Wordpress.org onto your own host (such as GoDaddy or Bluehost).

Recruiters are starting to use LinkedIn as the main place for sourcing candidates because it's free and the top professionals are on there. Many people don't use LinkedIn to the best of their ability and fail to complete their entire profile, such that it says "100% complete."

Just like any other search engine recruiters are using, keywords are extremely important. You want to fill out your entire profile, just like you would a job application. You'll also want to get at least one recommendation from a supervisor or friend, which will give you a "1″ next to a "thumbs up" graphic when people search for you.

Then, you should import all your contacts from Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, etc, so that you can start to build your network or grow your existing network. The more people you're connected to the better because you're only able to reach other people in your network (1st, 2nd & 3rd degrees) by having these connections. You may want to pay for a premium account, so you can contact other recruiters that may help you. Finally, you should conduct searches on there for jobs that you may be interested in and reach out to those individuals that may supply you with an interview or referral.

Sign on, if you haven't, to a social-networking service like LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. The services allow you to be in touch with people without the formalities and hi-how-are-you of an e-mail. And it's often your more casual contacts who point you to the next job. Just don't abuse the technology and annoy people. Only "friend" people you've met, and remind them of the connection if it's been a while. A solid network of 50 is better than 1,000 acquaintances.