As I mentioned, about a month ago, I attended the Crossroads Career Transition Workshop (Double Oak, Texas) and heard two of my favorite speakers: Dirk Spencer and Gail Houston. I just spent several blogs on Dirk, now it is time to pass along Gail’s advice to job seekers.
LinkedIn is still the king when it comes to helping recruiters find good candidates, but according to Gail, Facebook is catching up. It is the new powerful tool. The reason is pretty simple. 500 million people are on Facebook. 85 million people are on LinkedIn. The pool is much bigger. As a result, job seekers (whether you are actively looking or simply interested if that perfect job comes looking for you) should make their Facebook information resemble their LinkedIn information.
Click on your Home tab, then click on the Profile tab and then the Info tab…at least, that is what Gail said. For my money, just go over to the “Edit My Profile” tab next to your profile photo on your home page. If you click on that, you have all sorts of options: Change your profile picture, Relationships (better stay away from that!), Education and Work, Likes and Interests (be careful!), and Contact Information. You have the “functional equivalent” of your LinkedIn profile in the new place recruiters are looking to find people like you.
Speaking of “people like you,” make sure the recruiter can figure out what you do. If you are a software engineer, tell me what kind. If you are a marketer….tell me what kind. If you are a teacher….you get the idea.
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December 9th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
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December 10th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
I was always taught that it was not the number of leads that mattered. What mattered was the number of good or qualified leads. I would suggest to you that it is possible that having access to 500 million people from the general population versus 85 million from a more professional audience is actually worse and not better!
I am in the field of electrical engineering and most of the Facebook people I connect with don’t have a clue concerning anything to do with engineering at all.
A technical recruiter posting to all of them is wasting his time.
And finally, I have yet to receive SPAM emails via LinkedIn. I cannot say the same about Facebook.
Facebook is fine. I like it for what it does. But LinkedIn is a totally different tool. It does not replace Facebook but neither is it supplanted by Facebook.