Gone are the days where job searching meant scouring the newspapers and help wanted ads. Nowadays, job searching consists of searching the major hubs of job postings online. How do you know what’s a scam and what’s not? With hundreds of thousands of postings scattered across the web and scams everywhere, what’s a college student supposed to do? I’m glad you asked.
YouTube your resume. This is a great way for you to showcase your creativity to your future employer. Employers love watching video resumes because they can get a better feel for your personality and your attention to detail (not to mention the fact that they are probably tired of looking over hundreds of paper resumes). On the other hand, employers will be immediately turned off if they see a video of you reciting your resume or an unnecessarily long video. Some good examples: James the workaholic and Angelica the teacher.
Use Twitter to find out who is hiring. Most companies will tweet about positions they’re hiring for. With Twitter, you can peruse hundreds of companies at once. Use the search bar to type any key words associated with your ideal job position or field of expertise and watch the companies line up. There are also companies that take all the guesswork out of Twitter job searching. Their main objective is to find you a job through Twitter. My personal favorite one is The Creative Ham. They have a “forever incomplete list of agencies” and “irrelevant job listings” to make your job search easier.
Facebook is an easy way to expand your options in your job search. Figure out which companies are growing and hiring. Just like Twitter, Facebook is great for figuring out the status of a company. Look at the number of people who “like” the company and how many people feel passionately about it by looking at the comments left on the page. You can also easily see what companies “like” the company you’re looking at and how your company engages with consumers and competitors.
LinkedIn is the mother load of all job postings. If you’re not on LinkedIn, you need to be. Make a resume, join every group you can, and start looking at companies that you’re interested in. LinkedIn has a tab purely for job postings and companies that are expanding rapidly. Another great feature of LinkedIn is the ability to put a face to a name. Employers will want to see your face and you want to see who works for the company.
Arm yourself with all the knowledge that social media can give you. Knowledge is power.
Flashnotes 