Facebook is the epitome of social networking, insomuch as the majority of its many millions of users use it as a social and at times intensely personal communication platform: “Great party last night, booyah!”, “My girlfriend dumped me,” “Look at this weird thing I’m eating,” and “I wuv you Pookie,” to cite just a few examples I’ve seen.
For reasons like these, many people are leery of using Facebook as a serious professional networking platform. However, if you do—and as we’ll see, there are some very good reasons why you should use Facebook as part of your social networking program—you have to keep your profile professional in word and tone.
Many of the sections of your Facebook profile correspond to similar ones already discussed in the previous chapters on LinkedIn and Google+, so you should be getting a general idea of what belongs here and what doesn’t. Accordingly, we’ll focus on those portions of the Facebook profile that differ in some way from social networking sites we have already discussed.
On Facebook your profile appears under the heading Timeline. While it allows you to include all the professional information you’d expect on LinkedIn or Google+, Facebook focuses on your personal life by encouraging casual photos (which you should approach with professional caution), showing your recent activities (keep them professional), whom you recently connected with (like the other sites), who and what you have recently liked, what you’ve been watching on Netflix or Hulu, and the music you’ve been listening to on Spotify. Like LinkedIn, you can show covers of books you’ve recently read (a good advertisement opportunity for your dedication to professional matters).
Now you can hide or highlight these and many more features, but talking about and sharing your tastes and the most personal information about yourself is strangely addictive. While writing this chapter, I was checking my page and got sucked into all kinds of fun daydreams about music, movies, and vacations, which from a professional networking perspective are time-wasting activities and if published indiscriminately showcase the “personal me” rather than my professional persona and brand.
To help you keep yourself focused on the professional brand you want to promote, keep this thought in mind: You are trying to get hired, not dated. There’s an app we’ll discuss in a couple of paragraphs that will help you keep things professional.
An app called Bright (www.bright.com) allows you to import your profile from LinkedIn, which will make your setup that much easier. Just remember to alter it slightly to maintain readers’ attention and get yourself discovered by search engine algorithms.
You probably filled in your hometown, but this can be open to misinterpretation. Some people consider “hometown” to be where they live now, others where they were born and spent their early years. Recruiters search by skills and by geographic location (to avoid relocation costs), so you might consider entering the name of your current city of residence. In an age in which relocation is seen as a barrier to recruitment, I have known professionals in transition who are intent on moving from say, Phoenix to Nashville, to list Nashville as their current residence in order to overcome that barrier. I’m not recommending this, but people are doing it.
You need to maintain a consistently professional message across all your chosen networking sites, because recruiters can and do search across all these social media platforms, not only to find initial candidates, but to help winnow candidates throughout the selection cycle.
If you grew up with social networking, there are probably details of your wilder times available online for the world to see. You need to do searches for yourself to discover exactly what is out there about you. When you find something that is inappropriate for your professional image, go back and clean up your digital dirt.
I just returned from an appearance at a major convention for college career services and corporate campus recruiters. It was noted at the conference that upward of 80 percent of recruiters are using publicly available online data about short-list candidates as a screening tool. Twenty-five percent said they would reject a candidate based on this information. This means we all have to police the image we have online, so delete those once-amusing pictures of you projectile vomiting at a frat party. As an example of how bad the repercussions can get from just photographs, in December 2013 the Huffington Post reported on a man who was indicted for 143 felony counts, based on evidence gathered from his Instagram photos—ouch.
Your mantra needs to be: cause the least offense to the greatest majority of people. For professional networking purposes, you should leave out references to sexual, political, or religious issues, because whatever your POV is, it is guaranteed to cause offense to someone who might otherwise offer you a great professional opportunity. Your profile can still represent the real you without causing offense in these areas. There’s a neat app called Reppler that will review your profiles, help you manage your online image across all social networks, and alert you to questionable content.
If you are determined to include content that common sense or Reppler finds questionable, make sure that your privacy settings are very strict. Set them to just friends; even friends of friends leaves you open to danger. With the friends only setting, employers won’t be able to see the details of your profile, your photos, or your personal status updates.
On your Account page, choose Edit Friends from the drop-down menu, then Create List. For employers and recruiters, you can create a High-Value Titles or Restricted list and add them to that, rather like the way we discussed putting all your high-value management connections into their own Circle on Google+. Make sure that this Circle (on Facebook, your High-Value Titles or Restricted list) receives only audience-appropriate posts from you. People on this list will only see posts you tag as “public.”
Also, if you have connections with crazies who have no concern for their professional reputation or who post sexual, religious, or political comments, or comments about employers or coworkers, you can deactivate your “wall” until you land that new job. Alternatively, you could quietly de-friend them until the transition is completed. Whether or not it’s fair, the reality is that you are judged by the behavior of the company you keep. People have been terminated for inappropriate comments about employers and coworkers, and you could be deemed guilty by association.
Facebook is one of the biggest websites in the world, and your profile is one of hundreds of millions. In effect, you are a single indistinguishable stalk of wheat in the vast prairie lands of America. This means that unless someone is looking for you in particular, recruiters’ searches for your professional skill set will only find you when you do everything you can to make yourself discoverable with the profile you create and by the activities you engage in on Facebook.
First off, your Facebook profile, along with your posts (clean up any questionable past comments), need to complement the messaging you have on LinkedIn, Google+, and any other social networking sites. While the information you share and how you share it can vary, the messages you send and comment on should be compatible with your established professional brand and the messaging you use on all your social media sites.
About 80 percent of American companies, beyond local mom and pop operations, have a social media presence on one or more of the big four social recruiting sites, and while eight out of ten use social media to recruit, a recent study of corporate recruiters found that 87 percent of them said that the best way to get on company radar is to “like” the company’s page.
If you take the time to identify desirable employers in your target job search area (I’ll show you how to do this later in the book), you can then visit each of your social networking sites, search for that company’s homepage, and “follow” them. If you choose to follow that company’s page, their posts will show up in your newsfeed under their list heading.
This allows you to become much more visible to that company’s recruiters by responding to comments and posting questions (non-self-serving) of your own. When company recruiters make posts, add a “like” to the post and, when appropriate, make an intelligent comment or ask a question; this will increase your visibility. Because social media is still new as a recruiting tool, recruiters are excited about it and want success stories, so they pay attention to their social media company pages—and that certainly can’t hurt your candidacy. Any “games” you find on a company page are quite likely to be tied to skills and aptitude in some way, so if you play them, expect your involvement to be part of the recruitment process: Don’t leave anything unfinished, and “play” like the serious professional you are. An interesting approach I’ve heard to gaming these disguised aptitude tests is to have a friend who would never be interested in this company permit you to log under his name, allowing you to preview the test. Sneaky, I know, but isn’t the company being equally sneaky by not being upfront about their intent?
When an interesting position is posted, post a wall comment stating that you carry a similar job title and asking whom you can approach with questions. Once you have a name and means of direct communication, you are getting very close to . . . you got it: getting into conversation with someone in the recruitment and selection cycle.
For like-minded people who may not initially know each other, LinkedIn has Groups, Facebook has Communities, and Google+ has Circles and Communities. These pages all work in similar ways and offer similar benefits. You add value to a Group when you “like” existing discussions, comment on them positively, or start your own discussions. When you do this, you also become more visible, and if your comments/discussions are carefully thought out, they can impress recruiters and professional colleagues. You can also find alumni groups and job search groups, just like on LinkedIn.
Many online and offline conferences also set up Facebook pages for event promotion. These pages can be useful, giving you access to people involved in the conference. Search by “conference,” “webinar,” and “teleconference” plus variations based on your areas of interest.
Just because Facebook has more of a frat-house reputation than, say, LinkedIn or Google+, that doesn’t mean you should skip searching for and connecting with the high-value titles for your job search in just the same way you would on other sites through communities, groups, conferences, etc.
The bigger your network, the more likely you are to have an inside connection at companies you’d like to approach. Look for friends and colleagues, coworkers, former managers, college friends, and so on. Re-establishing connections with people you’ve known allows you to ask what they are doing and share news about your life. These contacts will in turn bring you within reach of new potential connections.
While high-value contacts in the target area of your job search are obviously the most valuable, Facebook has more international members than any other networking site, so it is worth looking out for overseas connections. With the huge number of multinational corporations in existence today, this may or may not help you in a job search today, but your social networks should be a long-term career management tool, and you never know what twists and turns your career will take over the years, or when knowing someone in Mumbai could deliver just the lead you need. You can duplicate these searches on both LinkedIn and Google+.
Recruiters live on social media sites, so you can find headhunters and corporate recruiters who live in your area and add them as friends. With a friend request, always add a personal note explaining why you want to add them as a friend. Headhunters’ and recruiters’ lifeblood is connectivity, so most will accept, and with that connection you have just gotten that much closer to starting a conversation that could lead to interviews and job offers—so much smarter than loading your resume in databases and waiting for calls to come in.
With social networking, being helpful and paying it forward is important. Read your connections’ updates regularly, “like” them, and whenever you can offer help, do so.
If you are in a job search, you should also add two or three search-related posts each week, generated from the resources we discussed earlier. Give an update on your current situation in one of them, and make the other two offers of help; a good idea is to post about jobs you’ve stumbled across that aren’t a fit for you, for example: “As you know, I’m looking for a new accounting opportunity, and last night I came across an Accounting Manager’s job at a blue chip company. It’s not for me, but if you know anyone who’s looking, I’d be glad to pass on some info.” This way you are seen as a supportive member of your professional community, and this will increase your credibility and visibility, not to mention your connection count; and by sharing job postings you will automatically attract new high-value connections.
Two or three job search–related updates a week might seem like overkill, but people are forgetful, and while you might write three status updates, that doesn’t mean all your contacts read or see any of them. By updating your network with your job search updates, you stay in the forefront of their minds. Hootsuite saves you time and enables you to manage your social networks by posting comments across all your social networking sites at once.
By the time you read this, Facebook could have more than 3 million jobs posted, and there are a growing number of apps that can be useful in your job search. For example:
When you see an interesting opportunity, you can flag it and use Graph Search to find connections. For example, if you see a job with Bloomberg Media, you can ask it to search for “Bloomberg” and it will search all your connections that mention the search word or phrase. You can also use Graph Search to find Facebook members who work at that company and view their public information (such as groups they are involved with), which can open the door to conversation and connection. This app also allows you to find companies and analyze the personal interests of its employees.
SimplyHired is a job aggregator that cruises around 4,000 sites on your behalf. The neat wrinkle here is that when you sign in with your Facebook account, you can see jobs available at your friends’ employers.
Branchout, Facebook’s app for professional networking, is designed to help you leverage your social networks for job search and professional development, and it’s quite impressive. It currently has over 800 million professional profiles, and it’s growing every day. It’s the largest networking service on Facebook. You can use it in a couple of valuable ways:
When you create a brief professional profile on Branchout, you become visible to the hordes of recruiters who search this enormous database every day. Branchout, though a Facebook property, is a separate website, with its focus on professional networking, so your behavior in all matters (profile creation, headlines, introductions, endorsements) should follow the protocols you live by when on LinkedIn or Google+.
Cachinko is another job aggregator that searches other sites for jobs meeting your needs. It also lets you refine your search by giving it feedback on why a particular job was a good or bad fit.
Bright lets you search for jobs on CareerBuilder. It can also tell you where friends in your network are working. It allows you to identify network connections that work at companies of interest to you. As mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, this app also lets you import your profile from LinkedIn, making your Facebook setup a lot faster.
IntheDoor allows you to see where the contacts in your network are working and the jobs available at those companies.
Inside Job helps you search for jobs, and will identify others who also use Inside Job and who work at companies you have identified as desirable.
Facebook Marketplace, apart from helping you buy stuff from other Facebook users, can help you find jobs by setting up automated searches with results sent to your e-mail.
Social Jobs connects you to open positions where you live.
I don’t think Facebook is going to surpass LinkedIn as the number one professional networking site just yet. However, it is becoming more useful every day and should definitely be part of your networking plan of attack. With the tactics we’ve discussed and the growing list of tools built for the site, the odds of Facebook adding real value to your search are now steadily improving. Just remember that Facebook really is geared to the social side of life, and while it is developing assets focused on the professional side, you still have to be careful not to be wooed into making inappropriate comments.