Guest Blog­ger Post By Adam E. Fields

Have you all seen that com­mer­cial from Ver­i­zon? The one where the kids are mak­ing fun of their par­ents for jump­ing on the Social Media band­wagon with their kewl new phones?

That is what most of my friends are like as well. Hell, in my [old] office, peo­ple didn’t even want to use Instant Mes­sag­ing pro­grams. I’m not sug­gest­ing you hop on every new SocMed web­site to pop up (I signed up for Plaxo, not really impressed), but you need to branch out and help estab­lish your per­sonal brand. In my case, I was able to get a great new job from it…

Twit­ter can be used to help get inter­views. Sim­ple as that. You obvi­ously can­not approach it the same way you would a typ­i­cal “job board”, you have to think out­side the box. How do a lot of peo­ple get hired? They know some­body within a com­pany. Well, Twit­ter gives you the oppor­tu­nity to meet peo­ple within orga­ni­za­tions and build rela­tion­ships with them. In addi­tion to mak­ing new friends, you can share arti­cles (blog or news) and have con­ver­sa­tions that help estab­lish your cred­i­bil­ity. If you aren’t a social but­ter­fly, you can at the very least get tips on how to accel­er­ate your job search.

Here is my story. A cou­ple weeks ago I came to the real­iza­tion (I was more or less told this directly) that I was not a can­di­date for a pro­mo­tion any time in the fore­see­able future. After smok­ing a few cig­a­rettes, I real­ized I didn’t even want a pro­mo­tion – I wanted a fresh start! Becom­ing a man­ager at my pre­vi­ous employer meant I would no longer be a recruiter. I would be more of an account man­ager and have to do 3 hour con­fer­ence calls and tell peo­ple what to do. I’m more hands-on than that. My reqs are my babies – I do the sourc­ing and call­ing – I don’t want to just tell peo­ple what to do and how to do it with­out get­ting my hands dirty!

I decided to call one of the experts in our field for guid­ance. I reached out to Glen Cathey (you may know him as @BooleanBlackBlt or via his blog), because we have had a ton of great online con­ver­sa­tions in the past and I wanted to finally get a chance to talk to him live. I told him about my back­ground and what I did and didn’t want to do in my future. This early in the con­ver­sa­tion, I had no real inten­tion of ask­ing for an inter­view because I still hadn’t done enough home­work on his com­pany, K-Force. After hear­ing what I had to say, he started to tell me about the career path for recruiters at his orga­ni­za­tion. I was all ears. We then both decided to start talk­ing about the logis­tics of an inter­view in the imme­di­ate future. Glen had a Direc­tor in New Eng­land give me a call dur­ing my lunch break and the rest is his­tory (had to do a face-to-face inter­view, fill out an appli­ca­tion, etc.). I was extended an offer the day fol­low­ing my in-person inter­view and it was the best phone call I had received in years.

What do you know? I got a new job with­out going to Mon­ster or Career­Builder once. I didn’t send my resume to 100 dif­fer­ent employ­ers. I sim­ply had a great con­ver­sa­tion with some­body who felt that I would be an asset to his team. I am thrilled to be a part of K-Force and can­not thank Glen, Paul, and Abby enough for their time and support.

So what does this mean to you? If you are a job seeker and strug­gling to find a new gig, you really need to cut out the sta­tus quo. Recruiters are inun­dated with resumes (believe me, I know) and job fairs and net­work­ing events don’t really work for 99% of the atten­dees (based on my expe­ri­ence with in-person and vir­tual career fairs as a recruiter – this is an opin­ion, not a fact by any means).

Start by first fig­ur­ing out what you want to do. Don’t just go on Twit­ter and post sta­tus updates say­ing “HIRE ME!” If you know the indus­try you want to be a part of, start doing searches for key play­ers in that indus­try. Also, tweet tons of awe­some mate­r­ial (either your own or link to other sites) to get ReTweeted. ReTweets are FREE ADVERTISING! Don’t for­get to @reply other peo­ple to engage them in a 1-on-1 con­ver­sa­tion (or invite them to fol­low you to Direct Mes­sage them).

Okay this has already been said and done on a mil­lion other blogs – time for some Fieldsy exclu­sive content.

I love Instant Mes­sag­ing. If some­body you don’t know @replies you or ReTweets you, reply back and ask if they have a Face­book, Gmail, Yahoo, or AIM account. Twit­ter was never meant to be a chat pro­gram, and it cer­tainly isn’t a replace­ment to Face­book, so use them all together. My lat­est exam­ple is with Jeff Moore, an inter­nal recruiter for Google. Jeff ReTweeted me which obvi­ously showed up in my @mentions col­umn in Tweet­Deck. I saw that he was a recruiter and seemed really cool judg­ing by his bio and tweets, so I imme­di­ately shot him a DM with my email and asked if he had time to GChat. We shared sto­ries about our back­grounds and work­ing in Boston and all that good stuff. I plan on meet­ing up with him soon since we work a train-ride away.

See? It really is that sim­ple. Now I am obvi­ously not try­ing to get recruited by Jeff or force-feed refer­rals down his throat (I know some pretty techy peo­ple), but I am look­ing to meet new peo­ple all the time because I love to talk and who knows, these rela­tion­ships I am build­ing now could lead to future oppor­tu­ni­ties for me.

I’ve been to Twee­t­Ups and net­work­ing events. I have over 1000 con­nec­tions on LinkedIn. None of it really did any­thing for me. Face­book has been AWESOME for look­ing at pic­tures of peo­ple I never intend to talk to ever again – but that isn’t really doing much for my career. Twit­ter works. What more proof do you need?

@Fieldsy4Life Face­book LinkedIn

P.S. Hey, this is Karla. You know I love a suc­cess story and today when I con­grat­u­lated Adam on his new job I  invited him to guest blog to help cel­e­brate. He’s tak­ing some down time to be LAZY and have fun before he starts his new gig. He’s on top of the world and I’m on top of it too, for him.

Noth­ing gives me goose­bumps like some one telling me they got a job they really wanted. A few months ago when an oppor­tu­nity dropped out of the sky on my head, I quickly assem­bled a team of amaz­ing coaches.  Craig Fisher was my peer sound­ing board and coach. I needed one after not hav­ing per­son­ally inter­viewed for eight years. He was so sup­port­ive, crossed his fin­gers for me across the miles and sent me inter­view tips. How did I meet Craig? On Twit­ter.…..