Social Media Secrets for Searching for Your Next Job

5 Useful Tips and Techniques for Landing Your Next Sales Job

By Alex Bender, Consultant at Treeline Inc.

With U.S. Employers adding no new jobs in August and unemployment hovering around 9.1% how do you find your next job?

When I ask my average candidate this question, they typically respond with "the boards:" monster.com, careerbuilder.com, indeed.com, etc. However, the fact of the matter is that the boards are antiquated and are going the way of the dinosaur. This is a popular notion and has been referenced by many others from the Wall Street Journal to the Gurus on LinkedIn. So if the job boards are no longer effective how are people finding opportunities?

Bellow are 5 useful tips and techniques that have helped my past candidates land new opportunities.

1. Linkedin:

Linkedin is one of the best tools out there. Its free, its easy and it has 101 million users world wide, if you are not on there then you are behind the eight ball.

Complete your profile: If you don't have a 100% complete profile you are doing yourself a disservice (almost as bad as not being on LinkedIn at all). Linkedin has 1 million+ company pages and countless recruiters spend three, four, five hours a day scouring profiles looking for their next top producer. If you don't have a complete profile somebody else is going to show up in the search before you.

Join Groups: Within Linkedin there are over 870,000 groups all with specific focuses including for specific companies, universities and job seekers. These groups will help you instantly grow your network and start connecting with people that are relevant to what you are looking for. Also any members of a group can send messages to each other, side stepping the whole In Mail thing.

Follow Companies and People: Any companies that you have an interest in you should follow, any HR managers, Directors or VP's in the companies you are interested in you should follow. This allows you to see anything they post including job openings.

2. Jigsaw.com

Jigsaw.com is a free database with employees and companies contact information. It is a great tool to use when coupled with Linkedin. Simply, find your designated contact on Linkedin (HR Manager, Sales Director) and then look them up on Jigsaw and reach out direct; send them a email with your resume and give them a call.

Click Here to Join Jigsaw

3. Glassdoor.com

Glassdoor.com is a job board with a modern twist; it allows you to search and see jobs like your typical board. but it also incorporates anonymous employee and job seeker reviews of the company. Reviews include: salaries, interview information, work life balance, management styles and general expectations.

4. Twitter / TweetDeck

No matter how you feel about Twitter the fact of the matter is Twitter is growing in popularity and companies like it because it is a free way to advertise everything from products to jobs. The best way to make Twitter work for you in a job search is to pair it with an application like TweetDeck (its free). TweetDeck allows you to search the Twitter-verse for key words and notify you when they come up. It also gives you an easy way to follow certain groups and people in neatly defined categories.

5. BranchOut

This is a professional social networking tool / Site, much like linkedin. However, it is directly tied to your Facebook account and allows you to see connections of your personal friends and family and where they work.

Good luck in your search and I hope that these tools and tricks will help find you success within your Job Search.