Tag Archives: social media

Not Another Facebook Update!

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When Face­book sud­denly changed to time­line, there was wide­spread con­tro­versy. Some liked the double-picture spread. Oth­ers were con­cerned that the change would make it far too easy for view­ers to access the early years of your Face­book his­tory. And who wants their mid­dle school pic­tures open to the public?

Now it’s not just Face­book that’s chang­ing. LinkedIn has also recently altered its for­mat to a new, more visu­ally stream­lined pro­file for­mat. But before we hem and haw over social media changes, let’s take a look at the details. This for­mat may just work to your advantage.

So what’s dif­fer­ent? First thing you’ll prob­a­bly notice is that your pic­ture is much big­ger. While the photo slot is still square-shaped, it will be all the more notice­able when view­ers land on your page. As always, make sure it’s pro­fes­sional! Addi­tion­ally, the lay­out of your infor­ma­tion will no longer appear like a print resume con­verted online. In fact, it will read visu­ally a bit like the Face­book “About” sec­tion. The logo of each com­pany you have worked for will appear next to its title.  Each cat­e­gory of the pro­file (i.e. “Expe­ri­ence,” “Edu­ca­tion,” or “Orga­ni­za­tions”) will be headed in dark, all-capped font. And next to each head­ing will appear its own logo.

Sec­ond, to the right of your pro­file you’ll see some­thing called “Pro­file Strength.” This is a mea­sure vis­i­ble only to you that will tell you how com­pet­i­tive your pro­file is on LinkedIn. While this mea­sure is mostly based on com­plete­ness of your pro­file, there’s another way you can strengthen your pro­file with another new LinkedIn feature.

Now, at the top of your pro­file any viewer can see your activ­ity feed—did you con­nect with a new per­son? Post a sta­tus? Update your photo? This feed is a good way to show your con­nec­tions, what you’re up to, and the more you come up in the news feed the bet­ter. Aim for adding some­thing to your pro­file about once a month.

Another key change is your new abil­ity to “fol­low” thought leaders—a sim­i­lar sys­tem to fol­low­ing on Twit­ter or sub­scrib­ing on Face­book. Take a moment to research the top thinkers in your field. This fea­ture will help keep you up-to-date and also help oth­ers learn a bit more about your inter­ests and aspirations.

My over­all impres­sion is opti­mistic. Because of the easy on the eyes lay­out, peo­ple who view your pro­file will bet­ter be able to remem­ber you. Sounds fair enough. See for your­self. For more infor­ma­tion on build­ing your best LinkedIn pro­file, visit Career Ser­vices social media page.

Will You Pass the Social Media Recruitment Test?

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Think that what you post stays between you and your friends? Well, that’s not the case—employers may look for online infor­ma­tion about stu­dents as they apply for intern­ships and jobs. Recently, Career Ser­vices hosted “Do You Pass the Social Media Recruit­ment Test?” This event served as an intro­duc­tion to the ways stu­dents can use social media tools – among them Face­book, Twit­ter, and of course LinkedIn – in the job search and offered tips on how to man­age your online rep­u­ta­tion. (Career Ser­vices offers sim­i­lar events every semes­ter, so watch their event cal­en­dar or the weekly CareerNews e-newsletter to see when the next one will be offered.)

The ses­sion began with the obvi­ous ques­tion – what is the Inter­net say­ing about you? Stu­dents in atten­dance looked them­selves up on dogpile.com and other web­sites, and hap­pily none uncov­ered too much unsa­vory infor­ma­tion. Some found videos of them­selves, and the one post-doc present saw links to his research that he didn’t know existed. Kath­leen Mannheimer, Senior Asso­ciate Direc­tor of Career Ser­vices, who hosted the event, said stu­dents may be sur­prised what infor­ma­tion exists about them online and what employ­ers can eas­ily access. She sug­gested set­ting up Google alerts with your name so you can see what comes up in searches. She also sug­gested that when post­ing any­thing online, stu­dents should con­sider whether they would want to see that infor­ma­tion, photo, etc. printed in the news­pa­per. If you hap­pen to come across any­thing you would not want to see as pub­lic infor­ma­tion, lifehacker.com has good tips how to remove infor­ma­tion from the Inter­net. Check out this info­graphic enti­tled, “The Google Your­self Chal­lenge” to learn more.

The pre­sen­ta­tion then shifted to LinkedIn, the social media plat­form that was founded with the express pur­pose of busi­ness net­work­ing. Despite this, Mannheimer said employ­ers can use any social media plat­form, even Twit­ter and Pin­ter­est, to track and source can­di­dates. Mannheimer showed one of LinkedIn’s edu­ca­tional videos on cre­at­ing a pro­fes­sional pro­file. Tips included upload­ing a business-like pic­ture and giv­ing an in-depth sum­mary of your expe­ri­ences. LinkedIn has under­gone a num­ber of changes to be more applic­a­ble to stu­dents. “In the very early stages, it was pri­mar­ily for expe­ri­enced pro­fes­sion­als,” Mannheimer said. A LinkedIn page now includes oppor­tu­ni­ties for stu­dent data such as GPA and rel­e­vant coursework.

Other fea­tures of LinkedIn include the abil­ity to search by com­pany or indus­try and to research a role model’s career path. Mannheimer sug­gested that stu­dents reach out to recent hires at their dream com­pa­nies and ask how they landed the job. She also dis­cussed that when reach­ing out to pro­fes­sion­als on LinkedIn, it is not the same as “friend request­ing” on Face­book. You should add a pro­fes­sional intro­duc­tion and mes­sage to your request for connection.

Face­book and Twit­ter can also be good sources for job infor­ma­tion. Com­pa­nies often have pages specif­i­cally devoted to recruit­ing on Face­book, and there are Twit­ter han­dles that exclu­sively post job open­ings, such as @TweetMyJobs.

Despite the increas­ing rel­e­vance of social media plat­forms in the job search, one stands out. “LinkedIn is going to be the most impor­tant for you right now,” Mannheimer said. Career Ser­vices staff can help you review your LinkedIn pro­file in the same way they offer resume cri­tiques. If you would like assis­tance, sched­ule an appointment.

On a final note, I sug­gest all stu­dents search their name on the Inter­net to see what infor­ma­tion turns up and review their social media pres­ence to find out what an employer might see. Now’s the time to “own” your online reputation!

 

Pinterest for Career Advice and Inspiration!

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Fash­ion, food, art, books—and now career inspi­ra­tion. For all the Pin­ter­est fanat­ics out there, Career Ser­vices has started a Pin­ter­est of its own with 8 dif­fer­ent boards. Get the lat­est career info from inter­view tips and career advice to events and inspi­ra­tion like this pin: “The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that do.” These words of wis­dom from Steve Jobs are enough to get me through a hard week…maybe even through midterms week.

Another one of my favorite boards is “Social Media & YOU!” which has cool info­graph­ics about how to cre­ate a pro­fes­sional online pres­ence, how to use social media in your job search, and how recruiters use social media to find infor­ma­tion about candidates.

Fol­low­ing Career Ser­vices on Pin­ter­est is a great option if you:

  • Want to be noti­fied about the lat­est eventsAre look­ing for inspi­ra­tion to re-pin to your friends
  • Want inter­est­ing, visual tips about how to make a solid impres­sion in the inter­view or at the job fair
  • Are inter­ested in what your peers are doing to jump-start their careers
  • Want to browse visu­als about the lat­est on social media and recruiting

Check it out at http://pinterest.com/princetoncareer/.

SOCIAL MEDIA

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Face­book. Twit­ter. Jobs. Which one doesn’t belong? Believe it or not, none. Given the vast amount of time we col­lege age stu­dents spend on social media sites, it’s no won­der employ­ers increas­ingly turn to social media to research job appli­cants. For the aver­age Prince­ton stu­dent it’s easy to dress spiffy and speak intel­li­gently in an inter­view. But what about that other per­son you put out there for the world to see—the one before we get to the inter­view. In other words, Google Search your­self. Sur­prised, anyone?

Now most of us prob­a­bly don’t know what our Face­books look like to the aver­age employer. In fact, most stu­dents are pretty sure their accounts are pri­vate. But are you sure? Do you really know those pic­tures from last night are not front-and-center on your pro­file? Prob­a­bly, you don’t.

Here’s what to do. You can start by read­ing Facebook’s novel of a guide on Pri­vacy Con­trols. Here’ the short story ver­sion: every­one can see what Face­book calls “pub­lic infor­ma­tion,” includ­ing name pro­file pic­ture, gen­der, user­name, user ID (account num­ber), and your net­works. In other words, one of the most impor­tant thing you can do is keep the pro­file pic­ture professional.

UNLESS, that is, you Jason Bourne your pro­file. In other words, make your­self unsearch­able. Under Pri­vacy Set­tings, go to “How You Con­nect,” then “Who can look up your pro­file by name or con­tact info?” and select “Friends.” That way you won’t pop up when employ­ers search for you. For all but the forward-thinking few who use Face­book to speak elo­quently about cur­rent events, this is prob­a­bly a good thing.

Just to com­pli­cate things a lit­tle more, there’s the new Time­line for­mat. Don’t want employ­ers see­ing that “is O.M.G. Bobby is SOOOOO CUUUTTEE like lol” from 7th grade? Or the seven hun­dred sta­tus updates with a sim­i­larly test-infused lingo? You have two options. Either limit the vis­i­bil­ity of the spe­cific post (avail­able through the pull-down tab in the sta­tus update’s top right cor­ner) or, under Pri­vacy Set­tings, go to “Limit the Audi­ence for Past Posts,” and you’ll be able to limit your entire time­line to friends only.

But in case, like me, you’re already “friends” with poten­tial employ­ers, here’s the tricky part. With Facebook’s new set­tings, pri­vacy is often a case-by-case basis, mak­ing it all the more com­pli­cated. So while you might list one Wall post as only avail­able to “Close Friends,” another may be avail­able to “Every­one.” This goes for every­thing from per­sonal info to tagged pho­tos. So it’s a good idea to cus­tomize your default set­tings so that all your sta­tuses about Justin Bieber don’t imme­di­ately go pub­lic. (Guilty!)

Finally, the moment of truth: the best way to really see what your pro­file looks like to the aver­age employer, use a non-friend account to check it out. For most of you, this means Mom and Dad. Or you could just go to pri­vacy set­tings, click on “learn more,” click on “Pro­file” at the top, then go to the blue box near the bot­tom titled “know what oth­ers see on your pro­file. You may be quite surprised.

You can also, believe it or not, use social media to enhance your chance of get­ting a job. If you’re inter­ested in a field where cur­rency is key, join Twit­ter. It will help you get news in your field right when it hap­pens. Start by fol­low­ing your favorite sources of news or your favorite aca­d­e­mics. For instance, now that Cor­nel West is no longer on cam­pus, catch his words of wis­dom via Twit­ter. Then, don’t be afraid to join in the debates. If you have some­thing intel­li­gent to say, by all means, say it! Or, well, tweet it. This will not only keep you informed, but show employ­ers that you’re an active par­tic­i­pant in your prospec­tive field already!

For more infor­ma­tion about how to cre­ate an employer-friendly social media pres­ence check out this arti­cle on YouTern with a really great info-graphic on the sub­ject: ow.ly/8pXLu.