This may come as a bit of a shock, but did you know that social media isn’t just for uploading photos of your weekend and talking with your friends? In fact, social media has proved to be an invaluable tool for many job seekers, so much so that many candidates find out about jobs through social media and are able to secure interviews through directly engaging with employers.

At the heart of utilising social media to gain success in the job market is being able to interact and engage with both recruiters and employers. In the following paragraphs we’ll break down how you can best use social media to secure a job.

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The three main social networks

When it comes to finding a job, there are three main social networks that you need to focus on; the most important being LinkedIn.

If you aren’t already familiar with it, LinkedIn is considered the ‘professionals social network.’ Your profile is more of an online CV that highlights your skills and experience, you can show your personal side but this isn’t a place for you to upload pictures of your night out from last weekend. We’ll focus mainly on LinkedIn in this article.

The other two that you want to focus on are the big ones, Facebook and Twitter. Almost all of the big brands will have some form of presence on these networks and you’ll be able to directly interact with them.

As an example, The London Hairdressing Apprenticeship Academy is extremely active across multiple social media platforms and they constantly post about their apprenticeships and the latest industry news. Consequently, if you are thinking about undertaking a hairdressing apprenticeship, you’ll be far more informed by reading through their timeline and you’ll also hear about any open days or events that they are hosting.

 

Creating a strong profile or page

Before you think about engaging on social media, the first thing you need to do is ensure that your profile is as strong as possible. On Facebook, you’ll want to make sure that your privacy settings are high so that prospective employers can’t see any embarrassing photos from your university days!

LinkedIn is the most important as your profile is your online CV and all employers will go have a look through it before communicating with you. Therefore it is essential that you complete all the necessary fields and ensure that you properly sell your skills and experience. To help you get started, this social media cheat sheet can help you construct the perfect LinkedIn profile.

 

Communicating with prospective employers

The great thing about social media is that you can interact with any company that has an active account. If you want to find out more about career opportunities at Adidas, you can Tweet the company directly and ask them to point you in the right direction.

LinkedIn is perfect for interacting with companies with the hope of getting a job (or at least an interview) and we’ll let you into a secret that will put you ahead of people who restrict their job search to job boards and speaking directly with recruiters.

 

Searching for an individual on LinkedIn

The one thing that puts LinkedIn leaps and bounds above the other social networks when it comes to searching for jobs is that you can easily search for individuals at specific companies.

Let’s say you are a marketer and it is your dream to get a marketing job at Coca-Cola. Well on LinkedIn you can search through all the employees at Coca-Cola and filter according to job role (so in this case you are looking for a Marketing Manager or HR worker).

Once you find the appropriate person you’ll be able to message them directly (assuming you have a premium account) to tell them more about yourself and ask if they have any vacancies. If you don’t have a premium account you can choose to add the person as a connection and if they accept you’ll be able to message them. However, getting a premium subscription is your best option because it is unlikely that people will accept a connection request from someone they don’t know.

 

Job alerts

LinkedIn has its on job search section and you can also set up job alerts that meet your requirements. This all works very similarly to using an online job board, however instead of applying with a CV the employer will see your LinkedIn profile when you register your interest – hence the importance of building a strong profile.

You should now have some food for thought and have a far greater understanding of the importance of social media in any job search. Good luck with your search and if you employ the practices outlined above you’ll massively increase your chances of finding the perfect position.