When it comes to using social media to look for work, you may have been told that it’s best to stick to LinkedIn. That site certainly seems to have the most appropriate focus and an all-round professional feel; however, you could be seriously underestimating the promotional potential of Facebook. Here are some ways to effectively make use of the hugely popular social networking site.
Time to crunch some crucial numbers…
According to a survey by Jobvite, 83% of jobseekers turn to Facebook when using social media to look for work; this compares to only 36% of the same group who use LinkedIn. Though, also according to Jobvite’s findings, a huge proportion of recruiters – 94% – seek candidates through LinkedIn, a large percentage of them – 65% – put Facebook to the same use. In total, 2,000 people were polled by Jobvite.
Favouring Facebook over LinkedIn with a job search also makes sense as the former’s membership number is several times larger. But there is still a certain degree of skill necessary for attracting professional interest on Facebook…
Fill in professional details on your Facebook profile
When editing your Facebook profile, there’s a section called “Work and Education”, where you can edit details of… well, your work and education. However, many of us tend to list only very brief details here. To improve you professional profile, you should fill in further details, such as key information about what you did and achieved in each of your listed jobs.
More easily share the right stuff with the right people
On Facebook, place your cursor over the button that says “Friends” beside a professional contact’s name. From here, click the option to create a “new list”, give that list the name of “Professional” or “Work”, and then add all of your professional contacts on Facebook to that list. Having done this, you now have more control over what you share to these contacts and what you keep visible to just your personal friends. This is suitable for when, for example, you find an online article that could interest your work community, but bore your other Facebook friends.
Network, network, network!
The above practice can also make professional networking a more streamlined and less clumsy process. And, when one of your professional contacts spots an interesting job opportunity, perhaps even on our own website’s job listings page, they are more likely to think of sharing it with you.