Online Reputation, Google Ranking, Personal Branding. BrandYourself: Control Your Google Results at BrandYourself.com. 5 User-Friendly Tools for Building Your Online Portfolio. Heather R. Huhman is the founder and president of Come Recommended, a content marketing and digital PR consultancy for organizations with products that target job seekers and/or employers. You can connect with Heather and Come Recommended on Twitter and Facebook. In today’s digital world, your job search has to be as much online as it is on paper.
Social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook can help you establish your personal employment brand and connect with potential employers — in fact, almost 90% of employers are using social media to recruit potential employees [PDF]. What better way to have all of your online and offline job search tools in one place than in a portfolio? An online portfolio allows you to compile what makes you employable — it should include things like your resume, cover letter, references, certifications, transcripts and any examples of your work (including writing samples, press clips, artwork or lesson plans). 1. 2. 3.
Cost: Free 4. 5. Start Me Up! A profile of Social-Hire. Should You Combine Your Personal and Business Social Media Identity? If you've just got a new job and are now contemplating tagging your Twitter account with a shout-out to your new employer, consider the case of @Phonedog_Noah, a.k.a. Noah Kravitz. Kravitz, a blogger, chose his Twitter handle when he was employed by cellphone news and review website PhoneDog. But Kravitz left in 2010, and last year PhoneDog sued him for $340,000 for the 17,000 followers he kept after he left the position. It's unclear if PhoneDog will get its way — a California court in February denied Kravitz's motion to dismiss. Meanwhile, Kravitz told Mashable last December that he "would do it differently now. " While Kravitz's case provides a clear reason to avoid meshing your professional and personal worlds via social media, it's not always a bad idea.
Consider, for instance, Aliza Licht, a blogger with 385,000 followers. Licht, who had worked in PR at Donna Karan since 1998, kept her identity secret until last October, when she revealed it in the YouTube video below: HOW TO: Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile.
With more than 85 million members in more than 200 countries, LinkedIn is a professional social network worth using, understanding and optimizing. After you've covered the basics of setting up your LinkedIn presence, features including recommendations, applications, LinkedIn Answers, and the Resume Builder can add value to your profile. Many of these highly useful features, though, are often overlooked or underused by newcomers. We spoke with four LinkedIn aficionados to get their top advice on making the best use of these tools.
Read on for their thoughts and let us know which tips you'd add for optimizing LinkedIn profiles in the comments below. Cover the Basics The first step to spiffing up your LinkedIn profile is to fill in as much information about your work experience as possible. It's your online resume; pay as much attention to it as you would your cover letter or paper resume. Ask for Meaningful Recommendations Use Value-Added Applications Here are a few of my personal favorites: The social job seeker: infographic. Social media is now central to every savvy job seeker's armour, and recruiters are also switched on to using it to source great candidates. For the former, it's a source of information. It allows you to get the word out about your search, collate recommendations and connections into an online CV - and build a good reputation in the process.
As a recuiter, the same applies, but in the reverse. To many marketers, this is fairly standard - but how do consumers feel about this? To answer that question, Jobvite commissioned a study of 2,049 adults aged over 18 across the US, asking them for their opinions on using social media when finding a job. It discovered that though almost all of those surveyed seemed to be socially active, just 16% used social networks solely to find their most recent job - but a massive 54% have used Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn in some way. Other key findings from the study were that: How technology can boost your CV, covering letter and job search.
Here are some tips on how technology can help your professional profile stand out. Photograph: Jeffrey Hamilton/Getty Images The average employer looks at your CV for eight seconds; they've probably received anywhere from 20 – 200 CVs for the job you're applying to and are sick of reading covering letters and seeing the same structure in Times New Roman. This is your cue to give them something a little original and innovative. By embracing tools and technology, it is possible to make our professional profiles stand out. Create a hire me page or CV infographic and email it to a selection of companies This would work for speculative applications as well as for designated roles. Make sure it is well designed though – using the brush tool on paint won't cut it. Create a hire me Facebook page and invite friends and contacts to spread the word You might not know anyone who knows about a job vacancy, but friends of friends might. Create a YouTube covering letter and tweet the link.