In the world of social recruiting, you have to know not only how to share information about yourself, but also how recruiters are searching sites for potential hires. Recruiters use keyword searches when looking for prospective candidates. For instance, “cloud experience†might be the buzzword for a tech position.
James Andrews, founder and CEO of Social People, a boutique social media marketing agency, offers the following tips to help you improve your chances of being found online and to provide a greater sense of who you are to hiring managers.
Include keywords. Because social media content lives everywhere on the Web, posts on your profiles are crucial for getting noticed by hiring managers. Within the content, you should find opportunities to reference your job title, skills, and industry-related keywords that hiring managers might be searching for. This applies to your Facebook updates, Twitter posts, blogs, bios, and Web content. For instance, your Twitter “bio†is actually your profile descriptor, and an important way to be found that is often overlooked.
Take advantage of Twitter lists. Twitter is great for fast access to job postings and career tips. It’s a lot easier, though, to follow and respond to tweets from recruiters and the human resources staff of companies you’re interested in if they’re all in one place. Lists group people based on a criterion: location, subject, industry, etc. Additionally, creating Twitter lists is another way to bring attention to your profile and get noticed by companies on the lookout for talent. Andrews recommends Listorious.com, a searchable directory of Twitter lists.
Find out who’s “talking†about you. Get on Social Mention.com, a search engine that allows for an intensive scan of user-generated social content such as Twitter updates, Facebook posts, blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, and videos across the globe. You can subscribe and choose to have mentions go directly to your e-mail or smartphone. You can also sign up for Google Alerts to see when your name is popping up in the news or on the Web.