Using social media platforms

Let’s look at a couple of relevant social media platforms in more detail and explore how you might use them to research an employer.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social networking site designed for professionals.

If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile yourself yet – you will be able to access some information about the company and key people who work there, but your access will be limited.

Creating and developing your LinkedIn profile

If you need to start from scratch, here’s an ‘Expert Academy’ video showing you how to set up your account.

For this course, we only have space to show you short videos, but if this is something you want to learn more about, there are many longer videos available that will take you through each section of your profile in more detail. In fact, LinkedIn offers a short course covering the basics called Learning LinkedIn.

Once you have a LinkedIn profile – you’ll be able to ‘follow’ the company to see their posts. You can also find out about their products and services, and you might find details such as their company vision and values if they’ve chosen to share them in this way. If they haven’t, you might be able to tell something about their company culture from the tone they use in their posts and the way they choose to interact with their followers. Reading comments from followers might also be useful – on the whole are they positive or negative? How does the company engage with those comments?

LinkedIn also has a job posting facility, used by many SME’s. Once you have your own profile, you can search for roles that interest you, plus you can let your network know that you are open to job opportunities. If you follow an organisation, you can set up alerts to let you know about any new job postings from them.

Facebook

Many small businesses don’t have their own website but do use a business Facebook page. If you’re already on Facebook yourself, it should be easy to follow them. While you may need to wait for permission to be granted, most businesses will keep this facility open to all.

Once you are following them, the same advice applies. Try to gain an impression of the company culture, what’s important to them, how they interact with followers etc. If you are able to use both platforms, you might find that their Facebook presence is a little less formal than on LinkedIn, which could provide a different insight.

Statistics suggest that Facebook is another popular social media platform for recruiters, but if you’re going to use it to actively job search, make sure that your profile is appropriate for potential employers to see!

Cleaning up your act

If you’re using social media to look for a job and interact with employers – you need to make sure that there isn’t anything that you wouldn’t want a future employer to see.

Cradlefin consultants, writing for LinkedIn, suggest the following approach to cleaning up your social media footprint:

• Conduct a thorough online search of your name – does everything that comes up align with the professional image you want to portray?
• Go through your social media profiles – look at content or photos you’ve shared or comments you’ve made and delete or untag yourself from anything that compromises your professional image
• Review your online presence more widely – including previous blog or forum posts
• Update the privacy settings on your social media profiles – think about who can see your content.

Ovr to you

Why don’t you set up a LinkedIn profile now? If you already have one, use this time to update it and advertise that you’re open to job opportunities. Here’s a useful LinkedIn article explaining how to do it.