Contracting Matters

Seems not everyone has heard of the Internet and is aware of the job hunting facilities available. That’s the claim from Mike Taylor, author of a new book for the non Internet generation and in a review by UK Recruiter communities Louise Triance she fairly points out that there are some omissions when it comes to the proliferation of social media networks and the affect these have on job hunting.

Just at the moment it feels like social media is presenting us all with new challenges. As a contractor/business person should I be on LinkedIn? Probably – there are a lot of Recruiters on that site and jobs are found via that medium. What about Twitter? Is that any benefit to me? Well, you should definitely reserve your name at least and you can get some good tips and info out of the world of micro-blogging. Twitter feels like this years MySpace and whilst Facebook continues to grow, it feels like it has more of a true personal/social niche than an advantge related to Business, but you never know!

Here are my five top tips for Contractors thinking about social media:

1. Use LinkedIn – jobs are advertised on there and you can build a good reputation and professional network on there.
2. Reserve your name on Twitter by joining – try and keep it professional. (There is also a new Twitter job search engine http://www.twitterjobsearch.com/)
3. Be careful of who you give access to a Facebook profile – it could come back and bite you!
4. Use iGoogle as a “window” on the world by setting up alerts and newsfeeds on jobs, sectors and relevant info. Spend 10 minutes each day on the latest news that affect you.
5. Consider using ping.fm to aggregate all your updates – it can update LinkedIn and Twitter at the same time.

There are loads more and of course you will have your own favourites but I am pretty confident that social media is here to stay and will have a massive impact on job finding.

Good luck!