Friday, February 25, 2011

Facebook: You looking at me?

I posed this question today during a breakout session... Does the benefits of Facebook and all its power, reach and opportunities out weigh the risks of viruses, scams, and loss of privacy?

In a group of 40 or more job seekers, most were 50 plus in age, we had a spirited debate about the pros and cons of using Facebook as a tool for people in transition doing a serious job search. The title of the breakout session was: "FACEBOOK: You lookin' at me?"

What do you think? How do you use Facebook? Do you use it for marketing yourself? Would you use Facebook for job searching? What about companies vetting candidates, checking out Facebook pages for insight into their candidates; is it fair? Tell me what you think?

What do people see as the risks of using Facebook as social media while conducting a job search, building a business or marketing themselves or their business?


Maybe it's more simple than that... maybe social media is far too open to risk anything as important as finding and landing your next job. Maybe all the noise Facebook presents in terms of people's rants, inane commentary on the world or their lives, makes Facebook not an appropriate professional networking or marketing tool. Is LinkedIn the only professional social networking environment to utilize?

I'd really appreciate any thoughts, suggestions or comments you have on the subject.  Remember that networking is not easy to do well, but it is essential in moving forward in your career.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Be on fire about your career

The news this week  had a story of not one, but two couch fires in the Chicagoland area. Holy smokes, how much time does someone have to sit on the couch to get it to combust? I actually don’t know the cause of the fires in the stories, but I hope these fires did not cause any additional financial burden for anyone suffering from job loss.

Activity in the job search means that you are out and about, talking and networking with people. Actually the job seeker needs to be on fire about finding a job. Meaning, you need to have a passion about your career, the opportunities and the abilities you bring to the job market.

After a job seeker has many weeks of looking for work under her belt, she starts to lose the expectation that she’ll find a job soon. Doubt starts to insert itself into the job seeker’s consciousness. Doubt can lead to negative thoughts and negative self-talk which start to feed on themselves and the job seeker can soon lose hope of ever finding gainful employment.

Back in 2009 I told the story of being as enthusiastic as a puppy dog when the doorbell rings. <Link> Keeping a positive attitude isn’t easy especially in a job search that seems to go on and on. But, I believe that one of the things that allows doubts to grow into depression is inactivity. Being a couch potato is one of the best ways to kill a job search. Focused activity leads to proficiency of your job search skills,  which leads to more network meetings, which leads to interviews, which leads to job offers.

Note the terminology focused activity: what do I mean by “focused activity?” Not all activity is productive and sometimes can be distracting the job seeker from meeting job search goals.  So, activity for activity’s sake can be counter productive and even destructive. When your activity is focused, it clearly enables you to achieve a short-term or long-term goal... getting you that much closer to landing the job.  

Be on fire about your job search, passionate about your next job and the future you’ll have. Don’t, however, let you the couch suck you into killing your job search and burn up your dreams.