The right way to position yourself on social media when you are a job seeker.

The aftermath of the pandemic has led to an increased focus on digitalization. From a personal branding perspective, it has made social media more important than ever. At a time when almost everything is available in a single click, social media can be used to establish connections with the right people, gain more visibility and get access to meaningful conversations. Hence this has become a way of life for a vast majority of people of all ages and social backgrounds and particularly the youth populace to build relevant connections & explore job and business opportunities. Several platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Google+ among others are used to stay connected to networks and showcase professional skills and establish a brand identity for oneself. With the evolution of social media, a number of users over the years have connected to experts, opinion-makers, and decision-makers, so learning how to network on these platforms is essential as people are extensively using social media to find a job.

Finding jobs through social media has become a trend now. Today, it is common for both job seekers and employers to use social media as a means to enhance and hyper-personalised the hiring process. Social media also assists as an excellent channel to connect with industry experts, opinion makers, thought leaders, and decision-makers.

Let’s look at some reasons why social media is important for job seekers in the modern professional landscape

Employers can see beyond your resume

It is an established fact that recruiters and hiring personnel leverage several social media platforms to source both active and passive job seeker profiles throughout the hiring process. They also utilize social media to gain valuable insights on potential employees that are not scripted in your resume. In today’s candidate-driven market companies are looking for the best talent in a competitive job market. With a little extra effort, social media research can uncover a great deal about an applicant’s personality, as well as their character. Your future employers are not only looking at professional sites like LinkedIn. They also look at available personal accounts on more social platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

A social media profile can indicate a cultural fit for your potential employer

Your social media profile does much more than just making you visible to hiring managers who while looking at a candidate’s qualifications, competency and calibre are also probing for signs and key indicators if a particular applicant will or will not fit into the company culture. They will also scan through various activities and view the community participation of a job seeker to understand whether he/she demonstrates in-demand traits such as leadership, empathy, and good interpersonal skills. This could also mean that your negative traits may send feelers to your prospective employer on why not to hire you.

Helps job seekers learn more about companies

Even when you are not actively searching for jobs in India, you get a chance to interact with companies that match your career goals. Not only can hiring personnel find information on potential workers, but job seekers can also do their homework regarding the companies they aspire to work for. You can gain easy access to learning about the corporate purpose and culture, career landscape, jobs available and sustainability and social responsibility goals, among other things. Such data can be beneficial and create an added advantage to impress interviewers with your knowledge, as well as provide the acumen to help decide whether this matches your interest to work for such an organization.

Social Media Enhances the Recruitment Process

Social media offers a great deal to both employers and job seekers. This enables hiring managers to gauge the applicants’ overall personality, competency and fitment. They can also cast a wider recruiting net through channels such as Facebook pages and Google+ chats. Job seekers can size up a company’s reputation, learn details about the organization, access job postings and even connect with current corporation employees through platforms like LinkedIn. Therefore, we can safely conclude that social media is extremely important for job seekers and is really changing the career development landscape. This also means that it is important to learn the new rules of the game and the social etiquette that will open many new doors for job aspirants on the lookout for their dream careers.

Some quick tips

Content matters:

Share quality insights and a fresh perspective based on your knowledge, expertise or observations. Ensure you post on time-relevant and trending topics that will interest the larger audience and get people talking. Include a personal touch that only you can add to the conversation.

Share consistently:

This helps build a relationship and habit around your content and it needs some amount of commitment. Identify what time your posts do best. Is Monday morning or Friday evening not effective? Do some tests and learn.

Start or join a conversation:

Engage your network by asking a question or by sharing a point of view. Respond to commenters and engage with other posts with a comment or share to drive the conversation. You can also use the poll option to ask relevant questions on topics of interest and collate collective knowledge on the same.

@Mention and #hashtags:

Invite people to participate in your conversation by @mentioning them in your post. This helps your post gets shared and seen by people you want to hear from. Use relevant #hashtags: Use a # to indicate what your post is about. Hashtags are visible and make it searchable and help your content get discovered. Include a photo or video.

Follow key influencers and your prospects:

Join in the conversation in your field. Demonstrate your knowledge of what is happening in your industry and on key challenges facing your audience to build credibility.

Posts with images or rich media draw people in and bring your posts to life. Try different things. There is no hard and fast rule.