For recruiters, both professional and casual social media sites alike are very common sources for potential job candidates. When recruiters seek out the most ideal candidates for an interview or job offer, they use sites like LinkedIn and Facebook to gather information that – in addition to resumes – will contribute significantly to their hiring decision.
Of course, not every aspect of your online profile will be of concern to recruiters. Your number of friends or your relationship status will never more important than job-related areas like recommendations and personality, the latter of which is gathered through your consummate social media presence.
1. Personality is Preferred
On LinkedIn, it’s recommended to limit news feed updates or conversations to a more professional standard. To attract the attention of job recruiters, you should join various LinkedIn groups in a field of your interest, while contributing quality interactions by commenting on news items in that group’s news feed. An example of quality interaction is sharing a niche-related infographic or news story. This will show recruiters that you are genuinely interested and knowledgeable in that particular field.
On Facebook, personality is expressed more naturally, via hobbies and conversations with friends. Via your privacy settings, most people have information like wall posts, friends and interactions set to private, so only friends can see. Doing this is fine even when job hunting, as job recruiters use Facebook more to validate personal interests through your liked pages. Some recruiters will browse through your photos to get a better assessment of your lifestyle, as well.
2. Profile Completeness is Essential
Job recruiters like to see candidates that fill out every aspect of their profile. On LinkedIn, this is easy due to the site’s pop-up reminders that show your profile completion. Aim for 100% profile completeness, as this will look good to recruiters while also making your profile more searchable, which is another aspect that recruiters look for. If a recruiter sees that a job candidate has no or little online presence, they will very frequently perceive it as a weakness.
3. Recommendations and Endorsements Are Key
LinkedIn recommendations and endorsements are both highly-utilized bits of information by job recruiters, since it is the most accurate representation on social media of how the job candidate is perceived by his/her peers in specific fields. Endorsements are valuable because they elaborately express why the job candidate is qualified and easy to work with, while recommendations show how renowned that candidate is in specific fields and what their various talents are.
4. Share Success Stories
Yes, recruiters want to see your job history. But they also want to see what you accomplished while there. Success stories are a great way to show why you are a valued employee. If possible, use numbers to emphasize your success in a particular role, such as “boosted overall sales by 50%” or “was directly responsible for the signing of 30 new clients in a one-month span.” This gives recruiters a way to quantify your success, which is useful when they are comparing potential job candidates.
5. A Professional Picture
Having a casual photo on Facebook is fine and expected. However, it’s recommended to use a professional looking photo on LinkedIn, as it will show recruiters that you take your professional life seriously. It’s not necessary to get a professional head shot done. Instead, look at employees’ LinkedIn accounts within the company you’d like to work at and use their photos as reference for your new head shot.
Social media provides job recruiters more options than ever to fill positions, so it’s important to emphasize the points above to stand out from the rest of the pack. Doing so will ensure that your social media profiles are as visible and recruiter-friendly as possible so you can net your potential dream job.
Featured photo credit: Nan Palmero via flickr.com
