Search For People, Not Jobs?

I’ve written for years that you can’t get hired by Monster.com or the HR Department.

You can only get hired by a person who finds your resume online or a person who interviews you at your target employer.

Meeting more of the right people faster — that’s the key to any successful job search.

To help you meet more people using social media tools, here’s an excellent list of 7 tips from Dan Schawbel, author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success. (Thanks, Graeme Thickins, social media man, for finding this!)

I especially like #1 on his list: Conduct a people search instead of a job search.

The majority of jobs aren’t posted online. Hiring managers get a list of employee referral candidates before they even bother to view resumes from those who submit them online.

Sometimes the listed jobs aren’t available or never existed in the first place.

Many studies have noted that 80% of jobs are taken through networking, but few have sought to use the web to search and locate people they would actually enjoy working for at companies that they get excited about.

Schawbel then goes on to offer a 3-step approach to the people search, as well as 6 other ways to get a job using social media.

I would steer clear of tip #5: advertise on Google Adwords. Unless you’re really good at writing direct-response ad copy — and most advertising people suck at this, never mind civilians — you’ll only spin your wheels by writing “position wanted” or “top gun for hire” type ads on Google. (Facebook ads can work, however, as this story illustrates.)

Same thing with #6, upload a video resume to YouTube. It’s very easy to make a buffoon of yourself or look desperate in a video unless you know exactly what you’re doing.

Best is to watch 25-50 video resumes and pick out the points that attract you, then emulate them by creating a video that supplements, rather than replaces, your resume. Link to your video from your profile on Linkedin, Facebook, and elsewhere.

Those caveats aside, I suggest you pick one item from Schawbel’s list and implement today.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 9:20 am and is filed under job search tips. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.