Media Outreach

Finding a job is tough these days, especially if you’re living in states like Michigan where the unemployment rate was 12.9% in April, according to the website for Michigan Labor Market Information.

With all the recent college graduates looking for jobs, I can only imagine how much harder it is to find a decent job. CBS reported that the unemployed college graduate rate has doubled from over a year ago.

Two years ago, I was graduating from college (Wreck ‘em Tech!) and was on the job hunt. I applied for several jobs from careerbuilder.com and monster.com and had a few interviews and a job offer in an unmentionable town where I was not about to live.  I finally found a job that was perfect for me (and still is!) and it was worth the hunt…and wait.

But during my job search, I remember a fellow student writing an article on businesses that screen employees on Facebook during the hiring process. This got me to thinking about my profile and what message I was relaying to prospective employers.

Granted, I’m pretty conservative, so there were no racy pictures or words that should have been “bleeped” out on my profile, but it still made me think about the message I was sending.

Now with Twitter being much more public than Facebook, I ask myself what message I’m sending before I send my 140 character Tweet.

So, while you may be job hunting and using social networking to network your way into your next job, think about the following:

1. What is your profile saying about you?
2. Keep it neat and orderly- no one REALLY cares what “Saved by the Bell character you are.” And if they do happen to really care, they should probably get off their computer for awhile.
3. Go through your pictures and remove any that are questionable.
4. While your profile may be set to private and only your 689 friends can see it, you never know who out of those 689 friends knows somebody where you’re applying for a job who can pull up your profile.
5. If my future employer was reading my Tweets, what picture am I painting of myself?
6. Make sure your “Education and Work” information is current as it can act like a brief resume, if you’re using Facebook for job hunting purposes.
7. Look through your groups and clean out the ones you haven’t looked at in over a year. Time to move on and get that profile organized!

Anyone have any experience of finding a job/job hunting via Facebook or another social media outlet such as linkedIn? I’d love to hear your story…

pic by sarah g