Using Social Media to Get a Job

As more means of communication become available, different managers in different organisations have varying degrees of familiarity and ability with those media.  In short, some are tech-savvy, some dream of the time of parchment and quill pens.  

Unfortunately, for the job seeker, this means you have to cover all the bases to try and get your CV and job application in front of the recruiter: including sending a CV and covering letter printed on quality paper (100gsm) in a large, hard-backed envelope, with the address printed and not hand-written.

Fortunately, however, more and more managers are embracing new technologies and trying to find out as much about prospective employees as possible in the shortest time possible. They do this by using the internet and social media in particular.  So, tips for the job-seekers are:

1. Google yourself.  See what sites the first 10 links refer to and what images come up.  Are they suitable? Are they the kinds of links you would like a future employer to see? If not, do what you can to change the websites listed or remove images that are less than flattering.
2. Manage your settings in Facebook to ensure no embarrassing information is public. 
3. If you intend to specialise in a specific area, build your personal brand by posting comments and opinions both through Twitter and by creating a blog.  On Twitter follow people interested in the same subject area. Find interesting news and information on the subject and retweet it. Connect to people when relevant.  Blog on the subject, particularly if you have several years experience and are able to share insights into the issues affecting your industry.  Remember to keep everything professional – you want a future employer to find it and rate you on the strength of the information posted – and you need to ensure others who see the blog (including former employers, co-workers or clients) will not take offence.
4. Build your profile on LinkedIn. This involves putting as much information as possible on the platform as you would on a CV – giving employment history, skills, responsibilities, achievements and so on.  List the university and post-graduate education... unless you’re very young, school information should not be relevant.  Ensure you have uploaded a photo and connect to all colleagues, former classmates, clients and other business contacts.  Get colleagues, former employers and clients to recommend you on LinkedIn. The more senior the person the better.
5. Use LinkedIn and Twitter to connect to people in organisations that interest you.  If you see a vacancy in organisation ‘XYZ’ and a friend’s contact on LinkedIn works for ‘XYZ’, then ask your friend for an introduction through LinkedIn and, if granted, ask the contact, nicely, if they can give you any suggestions on how best to present yourself for the advertised role. What is the organisation looking for?  Who would you be working for?  Use social media as your future employer would and find out as much as possible about the organisation and the people you would be working for.  This will allow you to adapt your application and, hopefully, the interview, to show how you are a perfect fit with the company.

The future's bright? The future is a half-burnt candle...

Whilst preparing to co-run a session in a couple of weeks to a second-year Executive MBA class, we've been looking for examples of how Web 2.0 and Social Media tools are used NOW in Operations, or Supply Chain Management and so on.

We already have a load of examples of how they could be used, but we don't have many examples of how they are used. I've used the great Social Web to ask a question (via Twitter and LinkedIn Groups: the APICS The Association for Operations Management and Supply Chain Management Group) and have had the enormous response of ZERO comments or answers. None!

I admit, this surprised me. A few months ago I posed a question to another couple of groups (on E-Learning) and got around 20 long text answers (near essays in some cases) from people around the world.

So, does this mean that none of the people on the LinkedIn groups, despite understanding the importance of social networking, understand what Web 2.0 is and how it can benefit their sector?

Or does this mean that they understand Web 2.0 and have implemented it (beyond 'Web-integrated ERP') and can't be bothered to answer?

Or is there, in fact, a huge business opportunity waiting to happen? Communications tools (such as Blogs and Twitter) being used to improve communcitions along the supply chain.

Folksonomies and Wikis being used to improve training and enable workers at all levels of an organisation to participate in creating strategies, guidelines, work processes etc.

Widgets being made from Mash-ups that provide Operations managers with all the information at their finger-tips, comparing and combining all possible data sets (from their organisation but also further up and down the supply chain) so that they know what their clients' clients' clients' clients are doing now, and ensuring their suppliers' suppliers' suppliers' suppliers are not going to create a shortfall in production.

This stuff is obvious, isn't it? Or will it take another ten years before SAP and their ilk integrate Web 2.0 features (by which time we will be on Web 7.43)?

If anyone has any comments or examples of Web 2.0 in an operations context that are being used NOW, do please let me know.

And if anyone wants to invest in us setting up a consultancy to exploit this huge hole in the market, again, let me know! ;-)

This blog is constant...even when it changes...

If I say I'm going to write about '1984 being so now' - I'm not referring to the TV programme 'Big Brother', nor various governments' ability to spy on our every move. Nor to the creation of 'thought crime'.... for example where anti-terrorism legislation criminalises intentions to do terrorist acts...without the need to actually do them. I'm not even talking about the wall-to-wall plasma screens and projections, videophones and the rest of it.

No... the need to rewrite history. Back in Winston Smith's day, he (if memory serves me) had to rewrite old newspapers to eliminate records of things happening that contradicted the current status quo (e.g. old alliances with current enemies).... so that the record(s) show that the current enemy was always the enemy.

On an important level we have had this for ages too. Just look at the turn of the 80s/90s when Iraq, a former ally of the west, was demonised and made into the enemy, more or less overnight.

And so it happens, on a minor and unimportant level with normal vocabulary. To reflect the new buzz word of 'sustainability', we've been updating almost 100 pages on the website so that the term 'society' now says 'sustainability' (in context it makes sense, believe me).

So here's the question. Is that right? Should we change all previous references to the new term, because we can? It is easy online, after all, to change anything. You don't have to recreate old newspapers or publish revised versions of books.

Will this affect history? Will the ephemeral nature of the Internet mean that future historians, despite our enormous wealth of information at present, will be unable to find the 'truth' because it is so easy to change past documents online?

Probably yes... newspapers are going out of business. Everything is moving online.

So here's the next question: does it matter?

My gut feeling is that it does. In my simple example, it is of no consequence, but there are undoubtedly situations where organisations, people's names, events and other 'facts' are altered after the, ahem, fact... and where this is of public interest.

Should we, for example, have a bill of rights and responsibilities for anything online (from blogs to websites, tweets to vids)?

Again, my gut says that we should...but being unenforceable, there's no point.

So if you see this blog change at any point in the future, it is your memory that is faulty, for this blog is always constant. Even when it changes.