Knowing which social media resources to use and how to get the most from them can help during job hunting as well as for taking your career to the next level within your current organization. It’s not just about finding jobs using LinkedIn or Twitter, it’s more about getting the most out of learning opportunities, building your authority, enhancing your workplace productivity, external networking and last but not least job hunting.
Here are 10 star social media resources that can help you tackle all the activities mentioned above. Whether you’re actively looking for a job or not, establishing yourself as a thought-leader is important for all steps in your career ladder.
Learning Opportunities
- Ted Talks provides videos on informative and thought provoking talks from TED Conferences. The portal also has a section to engage in related ideas, questions and debates.
Key Benefit – Ted Talks are 18 minutes or shorter. All you need is a lunch break to keep growing your knowledge base.
- Slideshare’s your library of presentations, pdf’s, videos and webinars. It’s a crowdsourced solution for educating yourself with a diverse educational and professional community contributing material and sharing comments.
Key Benefit – Students, CEO’s and professional speakers all contribute content to Slideshare, providing information from all levels of the professional and educational worlds.
Building Your Authority
- Quora is a community of 1.5 million professionals answering business questions. Quora answers often get syndicated in major publications such as Forbes which helps build the author’s credibility.
Key Benefit – Quora answers typically get more exposure than a blog for personal branding.
- WordPress is a simple blogging solution with free templates and a community of bloggers to share content with. Suitable for professionals and newbies, WordPress lets you blog like a pro.
Key Benefit – Blogging helps you get clarity on your ideas by polishing them up.
Workplace Productivity
- Evernote can be considered as “Note taking on steroids”. You can sync between devices, add images and audio content, clip web pages – all of which lets team members share research and notes.
Key Benefit – Your ideas, research and notes will all be in one place rather than scattered across devices and applications.
- Asana’s aimed at those who are looking for an alternate to email for collaboration. It provides a way to manage tasks, get updates on progress and organize ideas, plans and deadlines all without email.
Key Benefit – By fully implementing Asana you can automatically segregate your business and personal life…digitally at least.
External Networking
- Twitter is a popular tool because it’s 140 character microblogging platform creates a low barrier for maintance. It has become a popular place to connect with influencers across all industries.
Key Benefit – You can have one-on-one conversations with recruiters even before you score the interview.
- LinkedIn Groups are like conference rooms where professionals of a certain industry or interest get together and talk. It’s a way to post updates, share news or add you own post links.
Key Benefit – A great way to advance your career is to be considered a thought leader in your field by becoming a well-known contributor to LinkedIn Groups.
Job Hunting
- DoYouBuzz starts job hunting on the right foot by helping you create a snazzy resume. It provides templates for creating CVs, storing them online, exporting .pdf versions and even provides statistics for premium users.
Key Benefit – Recruiters are overloaded with CV’s thus having a unique resume increases your chances of capturing their attention.
- BeKnown combines Monster job search with the ability to connect to professionals at their listed companies. It integrates with Facebook and keeps your business and professional connections separate.
Key Benefit – Sometimes all you need is a foot in the door to advance your career in a new organization…that’s exactly what BeKnown does.
What about you? What social media platforms do you think have been the most valuable in advancing your career? Please share your experiences in the comments below.
(About the Author: Paul Keijzer is the CEO and Managing Partner of Engage Consulting in Malaysia, Pakistan and U.A.E. He focuses on transforming top teams and managing talent across Asia’s emerging and frontier markets. Paul has a firm belief that outstanding results can only be achieved through people, by engaging teams and building commitment by creating a new paradigm between company and employee. Paul has delivered transformational interventions for more than 50 blue chip organizations in countries across Asia including Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Fiji, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Egypt, Korea, U.A.E. and India.)
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