Using Social Media to help with your job searches is now common place and Hiring Managers often check out their potential Candidates on sites like Facebook, to get an idea of who the person behind the application is (it’s already well known that your personal SM pages should reflect an appropriate image if you’re job hunting, because no potential Employer wants to know that you’re a night-club regular who may turn up late for work each day).
Your Social Media Profile now needs to work very hard for you and the Next Big Thing is adding Referrals from ex-Employers, Colleagues and appropriate Friends and Associates.
Referrals can come from people who you’ve actually met and interacted with, usually at work, but e-referrals are now becoming equally as useful and popular and it’s vital that you invite people who can genuinely speak for you to provide a Reference within your Profile – a broad selection of sources can only enhance your chances.
After reading from the top of the screen, to find out who you are and what skills and experience you can offer to a potential new Employer, they can then see you are also someone who they would want to hire because your Referees offer a combination of reassurance, proof that you did work for the Companies on your CV/Resume, plus an idea about the type of person you are and how you might approach the job they are recruiting for.
Old fashioned Reference Letters cannot be ignored and still work perfectly well, but on-line Referrals are becoming the most used approach to link individuals and businesses-2-business opportunities of all kinds – and it costs you nothing to ask your Contacts to say a few nice, truthful things about who you are and your approach to work.
Do also consider that your own Social Media Connections and Contacts may also be Connected to the Hiring Manager because you all work in the same industry sector, so you can also anticipate that we’ll start to see References being asked for by Hiring Managers themselves, using those kinds of routes soon.
It’s also worth remembering that a large percentage of Vacancies do not make their way to the public domain. Many jobs are filled through Referrals – and if a Hiring Manager decides one day to search through one of the SM sites and comes across your page, he’s much more likely to send you a message if he can immediately see you’re someone who interests him in all ways.
Referrals as a job seeking tool, if well planned and executed, can be an integral part of the job hunt and you can enhance your success rate by adopting a strategy which secures the best Feedback for you. In our next article on the subject we’ll provide some suggestions you can adopt to maximize their potential to support your job searches.
Be ready; within a few years there will be nowhere to hide if you’re not giving your best effort at work, when you know you could be!
Phillip Okinda
Other Betts Blog posts of interest:
Are You Perfect for the Job?
What Really Matters When You’re Job Hunting
Look Differently for your Next Job
