Job searching with social media – Day 1

For the past few months I have been looking for a new job, as well as working on updating my CV and all the other things that come with it. Up until yesterday I was unable to utilise social media in my job search, as I was on a contract pending renewal and I didn’t want to alert my previous employer, a company that heavily utilises Twitter, that I was looking elsewhere.

Now my situation has changed and I am now officially back on the job market and have entered full jobhunt mode. This means I can now use Twitter, Google+, Facebook and all other social networks to help me find a new and, hopefully, fulfilling role, in addition to the job searching I am already undertaking.

Katherine, also known as @TheSourceress, was asking me yesterday if I was thinking about blogging about my social media job searching and whilst I initially didn’t plan on doing so, I have since realised that it can only be advantageous, both from the point of view in finding a job for myself and also showing others that it can or cannot be done. I figure that surely there’ll be a point when everyone is bored enough of my updates to actually help find me a job and constant exposure means that it stays in people’s minds.

My skills and a quick list of previous jobs can be found in my previous post.

So what exactly do I have to start with?

• A Twitter account with currently 996 followers – @carocat
• The active #rdg hashtag with what I estimate around 40 people reading it on a daily basis – #rdg
• A Google+ profile with 113 people in my circles – Cat Fu
• A Facebook profile with 135 friends – Cat Fu
• A tumblr blog with 740 followers – carocat on tumblr
• This blog, receiving around 100-150 views a day currently though it’s not properly optimised these days – carocat.co.uk

Whilst those numbers are admittedly more than the average social media user [insert stuff on how I’ve been on each of those platforms for many years, yadda yadda], that isn’t it. Each one of those profiles and sites is followed by people with an incredibly large reach and I have the potential to gain exposure much beyond just my social circles.

I used to also have a LinkedIn profile, but deactivated that last year. Depending on how the next couple of months will go I might reactivate and repopulate it.

Let’s just take a look at the posts and tweets I have made yesterday and the response I have gotten:

• Tweet: I #needanewjob in the Reading area. Customer service and copywriting primarily. Native German. Will take any full time job. Help me. #rdg [Link] – This tweet was retweeted by sixteen people.
• Google+ post with more details [Link] – This was shared by three people.
• Facebook post, again with more details. – This was seen by at least ten people based on the comments and private messages I received.
• Blog post: Help me find a new job – This post has so far had 69 views.
• Tweet for the blogpost [auto tweeting]: Help me find a new jobhttp://wp.me/p1ETs-13y [Link] – This was retweeted by four people.

For now I am discounting Facebook as a valuable tool for finding a new job, but my status update earlier hopefully achieved its aim in alerting friends that I am looking for a job.

Google+ isn’t so widely adopted, but the three people that shared my post have a combined 444 people in their circles.

Let’s break down Twitter, my main social network.

The first tweet was made at 4.30pm:

• It included the #rdg hashtag, which has a lot of daily readers/viewers. As I said above, I estimate about 40 if not more. Seeing my tweet was retweeted over several hours this means it was probably seen by most and it is also currently the top tweet for that hashtag search.
• It was retweeted by sixteen accounts.
• Combining the followers of the seventeen accounts plus my own brings a whopping 12599 followers. Excluding bots, inactive accounts and overlapping will still leave several thousand.
• Out of those accounts it was retweeted by six people I know or have met, one recruitment feed, one recruiter and five people generally active on the #rdg hashtag.
• Six of the accounts that retweeted that don’t follow me. They make up 5689 of the followers.
• I also received several direct messages as a result with people asking for more information.

The second tweet was made at 8.44pm:

• It was an auto tweet from my blog, just like this post will be automatically tweeted.
• It was retweeted by four accounts.
• Combining the followers of the four accounts plus my own brings 2387 followers. Excluding bots and inactive accounts that still leaves about a thousand.
• Out of the accounts it was retweeted by two people I have met or know, one regular #rdg hashtag follower and one follower of another account.
• One of those accounts didn’t follow me though follows me now.
• With this tweet there wasn’t much information and the lack of clickthroughs shows that it probably isn’t worth it tweeting something with such little info. As such I have modified the tweet that will accompany this blogpost to include more than just the title of the post: “This is officially my first day of unemployment. Please help me find a new job! Job searching with social media: [LINK]”

I think blogging about my job search will mostly help me and it will help me by giving me something to focus on. It by no means will be the main job searching I’ll do, but it’s something to keep me occupied and hopefully something that will yield results. With a newly updated CV, as well as plenty of motivation I am ready to kickstart this search and hopefully soon find something.

If you think you have a job I would be interested in, please contact me.

Additionally I will be grateful for any tips you may have on finding work.