Are you one of the one in six? If not, you have an area of opportunity to work on. Although you’ll find jobs posted on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, job posts are not the power of social networking.  The power is in building relationships enabled by these vehicles. It takes some learning and finesse to understand how to be truly effective — or, you can slog through it by trial and error, key and click and hope you land on your feet at an interview.

Before you can be effective in a web 2.0 social job search it’s crucial to have a working foundational understanding of social media, reputation management, etiquette, and a strategy.

If you live in northeast PA and want to increase your level of digital literacy, build your 2.0 social skills to help with your job search, help market your business, recruit employees, promote jobs opportunities or your nonprofit, meet others with similar interests, manage an online community, or just demystify the web of tools available today to enhance communication and quality of life, I have news to share:

Luzerne County Community College has invited me to conduct a  series of 4 workshops on Tuesday evenings in March, Facebook and Beyond with Karla Porter. It’s a hands on workshop in a computer lab that will be held from 6-9pm at the Corporate Learning Center on Public Square in Wilkes-Barre, PA.

From the course guide:

This hands-on novice series of four workshops is designed to build a foundation for using the social webs most popular applications like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, for the purpose of creating conversations, building relationships and reputation management. The workshops will provide hands on experience with account management, basic and advanced features, third party applications and the creation of a ‘social media strategy’ to help you effectively engage in virtual communities, target interests, promote ideals and events and manage your online personality. You will experience a variety of tools that allow you to participate in the key activities of social media: listening, connecting, contributing, communicating, community, and measuring. The workshops will take place in a computer lab for hands-on exploring the social web, learning and application of the tools. You will leave the workshop with a solid basic understanding of social media / Web 2.0 concepts, key skills for implementing social web initiatives and knowledge of how to build an effective presence and strategy. Target Audience: Students with keyboarding skills that are comfortable using a PC and the Internet that are interested in using social media tools for listening, connecting, contributing, communicating, building community, and measuring.

 This is a hot opportunity to tap 12 hours of my time and expertise for $109.  - a crazy unheard of deal at $9.08 per hour of instruction.

Go ahead, search social media seminars and courses and see if you come up with something comparable. I’m partnering with the college to do it because I’m committed to increasing the use of this type of technology in the region to help bring the community up to par in its use with other metro areas across the country, increase our market competitiveness and suck us into the age of modernity.

If you’re an executive who blocks social media in your company because it’s ‘scary’ I hope to see you there, and bring your marcom peeps too.

P.S. This is a community service not my consulting fee — so catch it while you can!

How many job seekers even know what gatekeepers are and is it reasonable to expect they should?

I don’t think so…

Would you expect someone who focused on the job they had the past 10, 15, 20 years or more to know how to look for a job in the web 2.0 world? I’m talking about nurses, accountants, quality assurance analysts, paralegals, draftsmen, and even those in HR professions like benefits specialists, coordinators, etc. In fact, a lot of people do not use use the Internet, and many not even computers, in their jobs. Think manufacturing, transportation, construction and agriculture to name a few of the very important and fundamental industries that make the world what it is.

While so many of us are caught up in the “ether” of social media, the fact is, many more are not quite there yet and we don’t have a right to demand they participate or learn to love it.

I sent a co-worker a Google doc so we could work on it collaboratively. She sent an email back saying she absolutely refused to get create a gmail account because she does not want to “have an Internet presence”. She is a talented professional and spreadsheet whiz who simply refuses to go online. Her job never requires Internet use and those times she does use it she surfs anonymously.

One could argue that if she wants to move ahead in the world she should do what a few thousand recruiters using social media want. But, is it a reasonable expectation?

Another co-worker has flat out told me the Internet will be the downfall of mankind. I went in his office one day to show him the animoto photo video I created of a recent event. His computer did not have the required software installed to view it. His comment was that he only uses Microsoft Office products on the hard drive and has never used the Internet. He does not have a personal computer at home. He used to work for IBM.

This isn’t uncommon. I manage a human resources task force made of HR professionals in the community who, with the exception of one member, are leery and confused about social media. Very few of the companies they work for have a social media presence and none of them are involved, even those who are generalists and recruiting is a part of their job. The most they do is use major job boards.

I’m assisting a grad student doing her thesis project. She needed to make a contact with someone at a particular research company. I suggested she search my LinkedIn contacts and I would make an introduction. She asked what LinkedIn was.

I could go on and on. In real life is a different demographic than in the social media sphere. Online applications and assessments are scary to a lot of people.

This brings me back to cover letters and the recent dialog regarding them. Justin Hillier makes a case that the best way is the video interview in his Social Recruiting 360 blog in response to my post Standing Out in the Crowd, on the art and purpose of cover letters.

Two days ago I received a resume and cover letter from a downsized 15 year VP of a bank. I searched him on LinkedIn, he wasn’t there. I searched him on Google and there were some mentions of him in corporate newsletters. That was it. I doubt suggesting he ditch his finely constructed explanatory cover letter in lieu of a video production is the practical way to go at the moment.

What do you think?