How To Find a Job On Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Just read an interesting job search article with a social networking twist in Slate magazine.

Money quote: “The key to finding work in this economy is to look beyond job-listings sites like Monster.com; if your search consists mainly of scouring available jobs and sending in your résumé and cover letter, you’re on the wrong path.”

I can’t tell you HOW many job seekers I talk to every week who think a job has to be advertised on Monster or elsewhere for it to be real.

No. No, no. NO!!!

And these same misguided job seekers wonder why it takes many weeks and months to catch on with an employer.

Why avoid spending too much time on advertised job postings?

… because companies will often look to fill positions before paying for a listing. If they do post something online, it’s often a perfunctory listing designed to comply with HR policy, even though they actually plan to fill the job in some other way. What other way? Every year, the employment consulting firm CareerXRoads conducts a survey of HR managers at large companies. The 2009 survey shows that just 12 percent of recent new hires were found through job boards, while 27 percent were found through referrals—that is, people who work at the company or who have connections to the company recommend the largest share of new people. There’s a word for this sort of job-seeking: networking.

The most forward-looking job seekers I spoke to said they’d all but abandoned job-listing sites in favor of social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. For a few people, job-hunting on these sites paid off; for others, the social networks showed some promise—at least more promise than sending in résumés. For a couple of others, social networking proved useless.

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Facebook: In early February, Evan Sornstein, a designer who lives in San Francisco, got laid off from his job at the advertising firm Razorfish. He began looking for work by searching job sites that list creative design positions. He also asked a couple of creative agencies to look for work on his behalf. Two weeks passed with no prospects. Then, on a lark, he posted a Facebook status update, worded carefully to avoid any hint of desperation: “Does anybody know of anybody who’s looking for a Website?”

Within 10 minutes, he says, he got four replies. Two of his friends promised to ask around for him. One reply was from Sornstein’s mortgage broker, who needed a new site designed; Sornstein will likely begin working on that soon. He also got a message from his friend Jenn Shreve, a writer (and sometime Slate contributor) who lives in New York. Shreve knew of an agency that was looking to redesign a Web site, and she introduced Sornstein to someone at the firm over Facebook. The introduction worked; Sornstein landed the gig, getting back to work within three weeks of his layoff.

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Twitter: A couple of weeks ago, I explained why Twitter isn’t a great Web search engine, so I was naturally wary when people began calling it a great job-search engine. Boosters say that people looking for work can use it just like they’d use Facebook or LinkedIn—to connect with people and companies they find interesting and to engage them in conversation in the hopes that they’ll get noticed. Last year, for instance, a software developer named Kevin Smith began following several Ruby programmers over Twitter. He became friends with a guy who worked at a small company called Gnoso. He sent them a résumé and told the friend about it over Twitter. The friend pushed for Smith to get the job—and he was hired.

Read the entire article here.

And grab your copy of our Free Job Search Audio CD here.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 3:37 pm and is filed under job search tips, networking. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.