Job Search Strategies

Where to start… hmm…

Research: Rarely do I go to a conference, event, interview, or connection meeting without first researching the people involved- coordinators, speakers, leadership team or candidate. I review the conversations surrounding the person, company or event. I look for what the social buzz is and usually jump in and comment. Connecting with people this way makes the huge room of people so much smaller when I arrive. And what a wonderful advantage when you are interviewing!
Build Community: Based on ME. People on Twitter see what I talk about, what I promote, who I talk to, what I care about and can get a sense of who I am. I build my community without any fancy technology automatically adding people who “might” resonate. I want you to clamor to be in my tribe so we can get to know each other! Sure there are a lot of people following me, plus people I follow who I have not yet met. But I am always keeping in mind that it is about quality not quantity.
Make Friends and Connections: Yup. I make friends on Twitter. Friends where just like other forms of social media, my aim is to eventually move the conversation from Twitter to the phone or a cup of coffee or an event. I can count off the top of my head over 5 dear friends, 30 business colleagues, 15 clients and hundreds of collaborators who I met on Twitter. Plus there are all those “friends” who just talk to me on Sunday in the fall when we are chatting about Giants Football.

Look for the other 7 reasons in the coming days.

In the meantime, try utilizing some of these tips in enhancing your digital persona!

#twittertips #twittertalk

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This is one of my favorite and most effective ways to use the LinkedIn database.

Perhaps your career strategy mirrors one of these scenarios:

You have a short list of companies in which you’ve always wanted to work
You see a role at an organization and want to connect with someone to get some insider information before applying
You are considering a change of industry and need to determine what roles are available in the industry’s key companies
You are networking with someone this week and want to learn more about the organization they work in to optimize the meeting

Your first approach might be to do a quick search for a company at the top of the home page. You know, it is human nature to see a search box and start typing. And honestly, there is a lot of great information to choose from by taking this approach.

Try entering the name of the company (let’s call it Company A) but NOT hitting that search key yet. You will see that LinkedIn serves you up options automatically, such as people who work at Company A, people who used to work at Company A, jobs at Company A, Company Pages for Company A and LinkedIn Groups related to Company A. This might be all you need to dive in deep to a particular aspect of your research.

The approach I often take is to head straight to the LinkedIn Company Page of Company A. Think of it like a home base.

On that Company Page, you can see if you’re connected to anyone who currently works there or has worked there in the past by reviewing the section that lists 1^st and 2^nd degree connections, as well as limited access to all of the employees on LinkedIn. From there, you can begin to use some of the more advanced people search tools to narrow your search. Two of my favorite ways to zero in on possible collaborators is to search locally and/or by my alma mater. You may not even realize that you have a direct connection to this targeted employer.

From a research perspective, there is also some terrific overview information in the summary (description, company size, headquarters, etc) Keep in mind that this is created by the company’s marketing team and should be just an initial stop in your company research. But before you pursue the organization in a more detailed manner, you can quickly determine from this overview whether it meets some of your more basic criteria.

In addition, this Company Page has a newsfeed of the latest updates provided by the company’s marketing team and often navigation at the top to toggle between the Home Page and the Careers Page. The Careers Page, depending on the size and Company A’s investment in the LinkedIn tool, can provide great employment brand insight, from open positions posted on LinkedIn to video about life as an employee.

Of course, this is just one quick way to do some initial research on an organization that interests you. There are tens of other job search and networking research tools and approaches to be reviewed at another time However, if after your initial research, you find that there is something about this company that is lighting up the path to your next right career move, consider taking one more action. Follow the Company Page on LinkedIn or the specifically the Careers Page within that Company Page (click the big yellow button in the top right corner of the page). This will ensure that relevant updates appear in your LinkedIn newsfeed and that this page will appear on your profile for easy access. Also, down the road when you apply for positions at Company A, what a feather-in-your-cap it could be to show those recruiters and hiring managers who view your LinkedIn profile that you are already “following” their company.