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How Can You Use Social Media to Help with Future Career Prospects?
How Can You Use Social Media to Help with Future Career Prospects?
Did you know that 3.8 billion people worldwide used some sort of social media in 2020? Social media is a great way you can further your career and make yourself known in the professional world. Approximately 80% of employers use social media to either recruit or to look up candidates.
This blog is a breakdown of how you can use different types of social media to help your future career prospects.
How social media can help grow your career.
- Use your social media accounts to show the type of person you are and the skills and expertise you have to offer.
- Have a professional looking profile on all social media accounts.
- Informative sites could draw your attention to a new role or company you hadn’t seen or thought about before.
- Allows you to have a space to share how your career path has changed as and when it happens.
- Having social media pages allows you to interact with people who have similar interests to you.
- If you follow and like the right pages, your feed will be based on your interests.
- Using sites like LinkedIn allows you to find companies you may be interest in working for
- If you have an online CV on LinkedIn or Facebook, they are always live for people to see.
Facebook is the most popular social media platform with 2 billion users a month. Therefore, to enhance your career prospects getting a Facebook account would be a good idea. Many companies have Facebook, to scout out and look up candidates. It’s also a way for you to see what type of companies you would feel most comfortable with.
Facebook has created a ‘Jobs on Facebook’ page, which allows you to interact with people but also allows you to search and look for your ideal role. To help this it’s important to fill out the ‘education and work’ section on your profile for future employers to see. You want to ensure your Facebook is professional looking, as you want people to be impressed by your profile and posts.
Liking or following harmful or derogatory pages or sites won’t make you seem like a reputable candidate. Equally, you don’t want to use or associate yourself with abusive language or posts. Furthermore, avoid posts, images or mentions of any law breaking or actions which would stain your personality, reputation and make a future employer reconsider hiring you. Also, try ensuring your profile photos, liked posts, posted, and tagged photos are all appropriate. We aren’t saying don’t post yourself out and having fun, quite the opposite, as this actually helps employers get to understand the type of person you are. We just suggest you think about whether the content you post is something you would want your future employers to see and know about you.
Most of you will be very familiar with LinkedIn, but just in case you aren’t, it’s a professional networking site, with a focus on career development. LinkedIn allows you to present a digital resume, follow and search for jobs and companies.
LinkedIn now has 30 million companies and 20 million open job listings. So, it’s the place to go to brows and search companies and jobs if you need help with future career plans.
LinkedIn is used by companies to search and find people they think will fit a certain role. To help this happen there are certain things you can do to increase your chances of being noticed:
- You can select ‘actively looking for work’.
- You can programme the ‘Jobs’ section, so it provides you with job alerts.
- It allows you to add a reference section to make you more employable to those companies looking.
- Posting and liking certain companies and sites will help to increase your ability to be noticed.
- Use the hashtag section to your advantage, so you appear on certain pages and timelines to increase your platform.
- Put your LinkedIn account information on your CV, so there is a direct link for people to follow. Shows you are professional and serious.
Twitter is an extremely active social media site with 145 million active users daily. It’s used by a whole range of people from politicians to royal families to you and me. It’s an extremely active community of people, who are all sharing their opinions and views. It’s used by businesses to promote themselves and what’s going on in their company. It’s also a great way to connect with certain industries and people.
To enhance your employment opportunities, Twitter allows you to show off your skills and abilities to a wide audience of people. How can Twitter be used effectively?
- Make sure you are talking to your target company/industry.
- Use the correct hashtags to get noticed and to pop up on the right people’s feeds – but don’t overdo it, be affective, don’t bombard your target audience.
- Put your twitter handle on your CV, to give possible employers the opportunity to learn more about you (only do this if you’re effectively using Twitter for career-based purposes).
Be careful with Twitter, as employers will mostly likely try and find you regardless of whether you put it on your CV or not. You want your Twitter account to accurately show the type of person you are, ensure your comments, hashtags and bio are all things you think future employers might look fondly on. Remember, even if you are on private people can see your bio, so make sure it’s appropriate.
Instagram is an image sharing social media app and has 1 billion active users worldwide. Instagram allows companies to promote themselves in a less formal way than LinkedIn and Facebook. But for you, Instagram can be useful to show the type of person you are and whether you would be the right fit for the role.
Of course, an employer isn’t going to base whether they hire you just on your Instagram pictures, but they may decide not to hire you based on them. On average, 54% of employers have eliminated a candidate due to their posts on social media. It’s extremely important to post appropriate content. Sometimes having separate leisure and work-based accounts is a good idea. But, be aware that your employer will often try and look at every active social media account you have. As with Twitter, remember your bio can be seen regardless of whether you are private or not!
Obviously, there are many more social media platforms out there. But, we hope this helps you start thinking how you can use social media as a tool to your advantage, and allow it to help enhance your career prospects.
Stay Safe,
Team Affecto.