Social Media for Your Student and Graduate Job Search

Marielle Kelly

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781137472373
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350315228
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Adult Education

If you want to help your students use social media to get ahead in their job search, look no further than this book. Taking readers through each of the major social networking sites, from LinkedIn and Twitter to Pinterest and Instagram, it provides jargon-free advice at every step, enabling readers to make effective use of these platforms for career research and networking. Illustrated with practical exercises and sample profiles throughout, this book will teach students how to manage their online presence, identify and communicate their brand and connect effectively with employers. This is an essential resource for current students or graduates who are looking for part-time jobs, summer internships, industrial placements or graduate jobs.

Chapter 1

Social media for your job search

Contents

• The end of the CV?

• Social media platforms

• Choosing a platform

• Social media aggregators

• Are employers really looking?

• What to do next

• Useful websites

You probably use social media every day, several times a day, to connect with friends, see what people you know are up to and share your own updates and photographs with others. This is the purely social side of social media, and it might seem like this is all it can do. Look a bit deeper. There are so many ways you can use it to make your job search more effective.

If you have any social media profiles, such as a Facebook or Twitter account, you already have an online presence. That presence can work in your favour as you embark upon your search. It can also work against you. In a new hiring landscape where employers are looking up candidates online, it’s in your best interest to take control of what they find. Hiring decisions can come down to a very small number of deciding factors, and social media provides a space where you can actively manage the impression you make on employers.

The end of the CV?

Social media is becoming so widely used as part of the recruitment process that the days of the CV can seem numbered. This may eventually be the case, but for now, there is a place for both. You can use your social media profiles to boost your job search in so many ways: you can apply for some jobs directly on LinkedIn through your profile, or you might send a speculative email to a prospective employer, including a link to your blog or LinkedIn page to help showcase what you have to offer. This, in turn, could lead to an interview. You could network your way into a job using your social media profiles as your calling card. Your online activity can complement traditional application documents by providing additional ways of showcasing your skills, interests and experience.

Don’t be tempted to throw away your CV just yet, or to hand in a sloppy application because you feel your LinkedIn profile is impressive and should do the job. A poor CV will get thrown into the “reject” pile or screened out by an applicant tracking system, so a prospective employer may never have the chance to wonder what’s available about you online. Social media is playing an ever greater role in recruitment, but companies are still using the traditional approach of assessing CVs, cover letters and application forms.

Social media platforms

There are a lot of social media platforms out there, with new ones emerging all the time. Before getting into all the ways you can make social media work for you, you need to know what the main platforms are and what each one does well. The following pages take you through the main reasons you should consider different social media sites to help you to secure an internship or graduate job.

LinkedIn

In a nutshell LinkedIn is probably the first online network that springs to mind when you think of social media and finding work. It was launched in 2003 and now hosts hundreds of millions of profiles. Individuals set up profiles outlining their professional and educational experience, and use the site to connect with other professionals and to keep track of their network. University students are one of the fastest growing demographics on the platform, so don’t feel like you can’t join until you’re in a “proper job”.

What you can post You can create a LinkedIn profile, which is like an online CV with a lot more features. It’s where people can learn about your background and the work that you do or would like to do. You can also add rich media, such as photographs or PDFs of your work, to make your profile more interesting. You can post updates related to your sector on your timeline, although most public interaction on LinkedIn happens in LinkedIn groups with specific subject focuses. There are groups for all kinds of professional interests, where you can ask questions, share articles and discuss news items.

How it can help you get a job As the most prominent social network with a professional focus, LinkedIn should play a central role in your job search. The fact that you can use it to create a professional online presence is just the start. It allows you to read other people’s career paths on their profiles, which is incredibly useful when you are making decisions about your next steps. You can also use the Alumni tool to find out where graduates from your course and your university have gone over the years. And it’s a useful way to keep track of your network as you go through your career. There is a whole section of the site dedicated to advertising jobs, and a growing number of companies are making it possible for you to apply for roles directly through LinkedIn by submitting your profile through the site, making applications a little bit easier.

The downside The biggest stumbling block that students face with LinkedIn is that it can be very hard to know what to say about yourself so early in your career. The majority of students will have some casual work experience, perhaps an internship or two and maybe some voluntary work, in addition to their studies. This might seem like information that’s not worth sharing when you compare it to the extensive profiles of other people on LinkedIn with established careers. Firstly, you’re at the very start of your working life, so you’re not expected to have the same breadth of experience as others on the platform. Secondly, and more importantly, there are so many ways that you can draw on your time in university and your extracurricular activities to show that you are a great candidate. It’s just a matter of knowing what employers want and how to show them what you’ve got.

There can also be a perception that people are likely to lie on LinkedIn, to inflate their experience. However, research by Cornell University found that people were less likely to lie about their work history on LinkedIn than on their CV.³ This makes sense, as it’s riskier to lie on an online profile that is there for all to see.

Employer’s view: Paul Vance, Head of Resourcing, KPMG Ireland

So many students use social media tools to their advantage nowadays by spotting internships and graduate opportunities. It can be seen as an effortless way to research a company and their activity.

KPMG places a big emphasis on use of social media during the annual graduate recruitment campaigns. We ran a recruitment campaign called Think KPMG, which was linked to our official graduate careers Facebook page. All pictures taken throughout this campaign were uploaded onto Facebook for students to like and share. We relied heavily on social media to promote this campaign. Social Media is also how we inform the students on each of our on-campus events.

Make sure you are “connected”. All students should be following/friends with/ connected with all the relevant companies they could potentially secure a job with – not only on Facebook, but on Twitter, LinkedIn and, most recently, Instagram.

Twitter

In a nutshell Twitter is called a micro-blogging site, which essentially means you can use it to post short updates. You can follow accounts belonging to your friends and to people you have never met who are posting interesting tweets. In turn, anyone on Twitter can follow you to keep up to date with what you’re posting, unless you set your account to private.

What you can post The site limits you to writing posts, called tweets, which are a maximum of 140 characters long. You can also tweet photographs or videos, repost tweets from other accounts and share links to articles on other websites. Twitter also allows you to interact with other users by replying to tweets or indicating that you like them through the “favourite” function.

How it can help you get a job Twitter has a mix of company accounts and individual accounts. Following companies you want to work for, and people who do the kind of work you might like to do, is a quick way of finding out what people in the sector are talking about. It’s also a good way to see what companies are saying about themselves online, so you’ll understand what matters to them, meaning you can position yourself as a candidate who fits with their vision. Lots of jobs are advertised on Twitter which might not be advertised elsewhere. More and more graduate recruiters are using Twitter to engage students, and some of them run Twitter campaigns, which are a great way for you to get involved with the company and get on their radar. It’s also a useful networking tool where you can get to know other people working in companies and sectors you would like to target.

The downside There is so much information available at your fingertips through Twitter that you can feel bombarded. There are ways to manage this and refine the information you see, which will be covered later. It can also be a challenge to fit a clear point into 140 characters, but this doesn’t take too long to master. The fact that anyone can retweet anything you post means that you can very quickly lose control over how far your tweets travel, which means you need to be particularly mindful about not sharing anything that might hurt your online brand. You can delete your own tweets, but they can still be there for all eternity in the public accounts of anybody who has shared what you have written.

Blogging

In a nutshell A blog is a website which you manage and where you can write about anything you want. You can post as little or as often as you want, be that daily or once a month. What matters is sharing interesting content and being consistent. Blogs are generally open to anyone to read, and you can enable a function which lets other readers comment on what you have written. Your blog posts can be as long or as short as you want, although shorter posts tend to be more effective.

What you can post Blogs are usually text-based, so you can write about your chosen subject, whether that’s your thoughts on events on the international political stage, your interpretation of interesting historical primary sources you’ve come across in class, or a blog about your travels. You can also post photographs or graphics to illustrate your written work. Some bloggers choose to share only photographs with brief commentary, to highlight visual work they have created or the work of others that they admire.

How it can help you get a job Blogging might not lead directly to a job, but it can definitely be an asset in your job search. A regularly updated blog shows commitment and confidence in your opinions. If you’re writing about the sector you want to go into, that can be a great way of providing evidence of your career motivation. However, a blog on a subject that is completely unrelated to the jobs you are considering can also be an asset. It shows that you have the determination to work on a project you have set yourself, and it can also be a place where you showcase your strong writing ability. Many employers specify that they require someone with strong written communication skills, and a well-written blog provides great evidence of these skills, which you can highlight in job applications.

The downside Blogging takes commitment. A blog with three posts in a week and then nothing for months does not create a particularly positive impression. In the same way that an updated blog can display commitment, an untended blog gives out the impression that you are someone who doesn’t stick with what you’ve started. Writing a good blog post takes a lot longer than drafting a tweet or a Facebook update or pinning an image on Pinterest. So if you’re going to blog, you need to set aside the time to do it right.

Facebook

In a nutshell Facebook is one of the longest-running social media platforms, launched in 2004. It’s one of the most “social” of social media platforms, as it’s most commonly used for staying connected with friends and family.

What you can post You can write status updates, upload photographs and videos and share links. You can also comment on the items posted by your friends and share their posts to your timeline.

How it can help you get a job Many companies, including a large number of the major graduate recruiters, have Facebook pages w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: Becoming social media savvy
• Chapter 1: Social media for your job search
• Chapter 2: Define your brand
• Chapter 3: Put your brand online
• Chapter 4: Boost your job search
• Chapter 5: Career connections
• Chapter 6: Make the most of LinkedIn
• Chapter 7: Make the most of Twitter
• Chapter 8: Make the most of blogging
• Chapter 9: Make the most of Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Video CVs
• References
• Index