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Using Social Media in Your Job Search

mikelally — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:41:00 +0000

I took my brother to Career Sherpa’s Employment Club meeting last night. She walked through her presentation on Using Social Media in Your Job Search. This made me feel guilty, because I was working on an update for this same subject. So – here it is. This goes into a lot more detail this time around. This isn’t just about searching for a job, this is about managing your career and your online identity. Enjoy! Drop a comment and/or share if you like it!

Using social media_in_your_job_search_v4_2_sep

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Things I Learned During My Year Long Unemployment

mikelally — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 14:29:57 +0000

I just signed an offer letter for a small company looking to do big things here in Rochester. (In fact it is about 3 minutes from my house! Bye Bye Jefferson Road!) I had been out of work for a little over one year. That is a long time.

I had/have some immediate thoughts on what I/my family did to survive this past year. Yes…survive. I am deliberately using that word.

Get your finances under control. In a hurry. We went to Defcon 1 on day 2 of my unemployment. What does D1 look like? It looks like cutting all non-essential spending. Satellite bill cut down dramatically. (Come on…you need SOME tv.) Meal planning started. No dinners out. This let us keep Family Friday Pizza Night.
Don’t let it affect your kids. Our goal was to not disrupt our daughter’s life. We had to cut violin lessons. (I think she was happy about this actually). But I went the extra mile in ensuring she was living a balanced life.
Exercise. Every day. We joined the local YMCA and practically LIVED there. This was $90 a month WELL spent. Especially in the summer. We ROCKED that place. And continue to do so. We extracted more ROI out of that $90 than anyone.
Work your network. I say this with the assumption that you already have a network built. If you didn’t have a network in place – an ACTIVE network by the end of 2008 – you are beyond screwed. I was volunteering at a place in the Summer. It didn’t work out. I got a new job earlier this week. BOTH came through my EXISTING network. I battle with the networking gurus all the time on constantly expanding your network. I like to grow organically and farm, farm, farm my relationships.
Have an internet presence. This helps with number 4 but it also helps you CLOSE the deal. I could SEE the hits on my Linkedin page. I could see the traffic on this site jump after I talked to people. I can’t tell you the number of times people have referenced my site, my linkedin, or my twitter (which I don’t use all that much) during conversations. It works.
Volunteer – work with kids. It will humble you. I worked a lot with my daughter’s second grade class. I worked with a non-profit that worked with kids teaching them entrepreneurial skills. I coached a group of 8 and 9 year olds in a flag football league. It gives you perspective. It will keep your head on straight.
Open yourself up. Possibly the hardest part. Under stress, I tend to hunker down and get inside myself. Fight that urge. Let people love you. Let people help you. And most importantly ASK for their help. So easy yet near impossible. Trust me. I know.
Learn. Every day. I had a teacher in highschool. Freshman year. All boys school. Priest. Taught Latin. (Now you have some insight about me. Only man I have ever really feared. But he said something profound. He told us to make sure we read something every day. Even if it is the comics. When you read – you learn. I made sure I was using my gray matter. I took on projects that FORCED me to learn.
Stay positive. As the great prophet Bob Marley used to say – “Everythings gonna be all right.” You have to keep a positive mental attitude. Even when you are bruised and battered. You HAVE to get up. You have to put your helmet on. And you have to go attack that rock and keep pushing it up the hill. Because ONE DAY it will not roll back down on top of you.

I hope this helps someone. If you are in this place – talk to me. I get it. I can help. Give me some love on this post – add your own tips – crab at me about how wrong I am.

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Using Social Media to Manage Your Career

mikelally — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:14:57 +0000

Last night I gave an updated version of my “Managing Your Online Identity: Using Social Media in Your Job Search” presentation to Hannah Morgan’s Career Club in Canandaigua, NY. It is really aimed at anyone who needs to manage their career not just job seekers.

Using Social Media In Your Job Search V3.0 Dec 2009

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Job Boards Are Dead. Long Live Job Boards.

mikelally — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:12:30 +0000

Interesting read from the Career Strategies section of the WSJ Online in the last week or so. Beyond Job Boards: Targeting the Source provides me with some more cannon fodder for my Using Social Media in Your Job Search presentation I am trying to give.

I was arguing with CareerSherpa’s Hannah Morgan the other day (we do that…a lot over job boards and their increasing irrelevance due to an increase in the use of social networking by companies.

Along comes this WSJ piece that adds to it by saying are focusing inward and tightening up their OWN pages. Why do they need job boards when they can do a BETTER job on their own of finding TARGETED, SPECIFIC people.

Companies say they are scaling back advertising on online job boards, which saves them money. By focusing more on their own career pages, companies also reduce the number of applications they need to sift through. And, they say, people applying through a prospective employer’s own Web site are on average better-qualified than applicants coming through job boards.

The article offers a scary but SOBERING stat: “In May, 22.9 million unique visitors searched for work on job boards…”

MILLION.

UNIQUE.

37% increase from last year.

How are you getting through all of that NOISE?

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Using Social Media in Your Job Search

mikelally — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:49:54 +0000

Using Social Media in Your Job Search

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Gen X Loves Social Networking

mikelally — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:02:05 +0000

Just read the latest from Penelope Trunk.

Do you know who is using social media? Gen X. The average Twitter user is in their 30s. The median age of LinkedIn is 40. The majority of people who are joining Facebook right now are over 35. This is because Gen X wants to meet new people online and reconnect with all the friends they lost along the way. Gen X is using social media to network.

I have embraced all of the above. I was a semi-early adopter of linkedin. Facebook has turned out to be fun. And today, ironically, I discovered a few things about Twitter that I am LOVING!

I figured out how to add a TON of followers. So what you say. Well…I am driving a ton of traffic to this blog. I am fine tuning as I go. Targeting and attracting people that will like what I am doing here.

All for free. All from the internets.

I agree with Penelope. I am trying to reconnect with all the people I lost along the way. Some of them should stay lost. As I should probably stay lost from THEM. I use all three tools differently. I try to use all of them to drive a little bit of traffic to this blog.

I use Linkedin to manage my professional network. It works.

I use twitter solely as a marketing tool. I only use it to “tweet” back and forth with 3 people. I use it to drive traffic. I want to see how many followers I can add. Then I want to see how many people I can get to the site. Then I want to see how many come back and/or subscribe.

Math and science people. Math and science.

I use Facebook to reconnect to old friends. I LOVE this about fb. It lets me get in my way back machine and re-connect with people I LOVED at some prior point in time. I’ve moved around a lot. I’ve lost people. FB ties me back in….sometimes only on the peripheral. But it is better than not at all.