078. How Millennials Can Use Social Media in Their Job Hunt

Social media is all around us in our everyday lives. Chances are you are checking at least one of your accounts several times per day. The other group who uses social media pretty heavily are recruiters and hiring managers. While it may seem a bit scary to think that your future manager may be trolling your Instagram, you can make it work to your advantage.

Clean up your accounts

Review your personal accounts and mark them all as private so that only your friends can access the majority of your profile. Take down any pictures or comments that could make you look bad just in case.

Recruiters and managers are trying to see who you are and if you would be a good fit for their company. Don’t give them any reason to discount you. Keep everything professional and clean and consider reviewing comments before they are allowed to show up on your feed.

Concentrate on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the biggest social media platform today with a focus on professional networking. This is the one platform I recommend letting your profile be public. This way recruiters can see your profile without having to use one of their InMails to contact you.

Take a critical look at your current profile to see what you can update to make it stand out. Key areas to review are profile picture, connections, and job summaries.

Profile photo – Choose a professional photo that only includes you. Ideally you should be wearing what you would wear on an interview and be behind a solid background.

Connections – Connect with everyone you know to grow your network. After you have done that, seek out people who are connected with the companies you are targeting. Ideas would be high level managers in a group you would like to work in and recruiters for those companies.

Job Summaries – You can keep these shorter than your resume, but this is an opportunity to increase the likelihood you will show up in search results for the job you want. To do this, organically include keywords that you find in targeted job postings. That way when recruiters are looking for someone with your job title and those keywords, your profile is more likely to show higher in the search results.

Research Target Companies

You should use social media to follow companies you are interested in through all your social media accounts. This will help you connect with people at the company that you may not have otherwise have the opportunity to meet.

Companies also use these accounts to provide tons of company culture information that will help you determine if it is somewhere you want to be. Following these companies will also trigger the social media tool to provide you will suggestions for companies like those. It’s a great way to discover companies you may not have known about. Another plus? When you land that interview, you can be up to date with all their current company news because you are following them!