Guerrilla Marking for Job Hunters 2.0 - Jay Conrad Levinson [77]
In either case, how do you make that leap? Other parts of this book discuss LinkedIn, personal networking, and some other proven methods for getting an edge when you don’t have connections into an employer. However, if that’s all you do, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
Do Professional Networking on Social Networks
Today’s Internet sites and tools, dubbed “Web 2.0,” can help you greatly, and they’re almost always free (typically advertising-supported). Let’s start with larger virtual communities like Yahoo 360 (360.yahoo.com), Blogspot.com, LiveJournal.com, and so on, where you can post content. When you join one of those communities, you’re not obligated to post family photos or accept dates from everyone you connect to. Instead, use it as a professional networking platform.
These sites typically host interest groups by topic and geography, so you can join all the relevant ones free, which lets you browse and search your fellow members’ profiles. Look for interesting people (i.e., those working at companies of interest and holding job titles 1 to 2 levels above you in the corporate hierarchy, since they’re in the best position to employ you). A second job title preference (but not to be ignored) is recruiter—also known as Talent Acquisition Specialist (or Manager), sourcer (executive) search consultant, and staffing professional (among others—remember the value of keyword synonyms when searching!).
Focus on the Big Social Networks
Two good places to look for professional interest groups are Ning.com and LinkedIn’s Groups Directory. Also find specific contact information for any of 10 million people at over 1 million companies with the business card trading service, Jigsaw.com.
You can’t ignore the 2 largest social networks nowadays: Facebook.com and MySpace.com, each with over 100 million profiles. Even if you’re not yet a member, here is a quick way to search MySpace profiles to find interesting people using Google.com’s main search box (type this exactly, including punctuation and spaces): site:www.myspace.com (“occupation * CPA” OR “occupation * accounting manager”) (intitle:Atlanta OR intitle:Georgia).
The only things you have to change are what job titles and locations to use for the kind of person you want to find. If you do not have a MySpace account, you may need to start one in order to contact people who do not list public contact information on their profiles. It’s also good to create a MySpace profile (need not include any compromising photos of yourself!) to give potential employers another way to find you.
On Facebook, the regular search (www.facebook.com/srch.php) lets you type a job title and/or company name and find people with that in their profile across the entire Facebook network. The profile search (www.facebook.com/advanced.php?ref=search/) has many more search criteria to narrow your results, but only searches within your Facebook networks (i.e., your school/alma mater, your geographic area, and your current employer) and your directly connected friends (equivalent to first-degree connections on LinkedIn).
You can change your location under Facebook Settings up to twice every 60 days. This is great if you desire to relocate: now you can see and search for people in your target metro area. To jumpstart your network, use Facebook’s Friend finder (www.facebook.com/findfriends.php) to upload your e-mail address book or IM list file, or search Facebook using a name or e-mail for a particular person. (Most social networks offer this functionality.)
There’s a lot of buzz nowadays about Twitter (www.twitter.com). With over 10 million members, this may be the most popular way to communicate over mobile devices. However, you don’t need a cell phone to use it. The web site’s advanced search (search.twitter.com) lets you search for people by keywords and/or geographically. Note the syntax: SQL near:Boston within:50mi.
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