Online Career Tips

By N. Cooper
Online Career Tips Staff

Hi there, readers! In my daily perusal of the internet and all things Social Media, I stumbled upon this article, “Job-hunting? Facebook, LinkedIn and You — Six Social Media Tips,” as you can imagine, I was immediately intrigued.  They had me at… well, hello?

The article shared some pretty amazing numbers:

• Two-thirds fo adult internet users say they use a social networking website like Myspace, Facebook or Linkedin (Pew Research Center)
• Among users between the ages of 50 and 64, social networking site usage daily increased by 60% (Pew Research Center)
• Many Baby Boomers are beginning to make a trip to the social media pool part of their daily routine – Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist & co-author of the report

The article goes on to discuss the job market for 50+ workers.  Technology can be quite the sticking point when trying to find a job — many employers value proficiency with internet tools; including social media.  Additionally, the job hunt these days has moved online.  Gone are the days of combing your local paper for the most recent openings.

Kerry Hannon, author of the article, provides 6 valuable tips to help “steer [you] through the latest landscape:”

1. Join LinkedIn
2. Try SimplyHired’s “Who Do I Know?” tool
3. Sign up for Twitter
4. Participate in online job real-time chats
5. Tap into Virtual Career Fairs
6. Join Facebook

Get to know and love your privacy settings, readers.  While they’re not an excuse to post inappropriate content, they will help keep your profile out of the wrong hands (eyes?).

Login to your Facebook account and click “Account” in the top right-hand corner once you get to your homepage.  A drop-down menu will appear, scroll down to “Privacy Settings” and click it.  That should take you here:

From this screen, you can customize your privacy settings (as I’ve done), or you can choose one of Facebook’s presets: Everyone (anyone can see your info), Friends of Friends (only friends of the people you’re connected to can see your info) and Friends Only (only your friends can see your info).

I prefer custom, so that I can tailor my content toward different users.

Do this.  Seriously.  Especially if you’re job hunting, you need to make sure that you present yourself in a way that you would be proud of, so if there is any questionable content on your page, remove it or adjust your privacy settings accordingly so that it doesn’t come up when your next potential employer does a search for you!

By: N. Cooper
Online Career Tips Staff

I spent a few minutes trying to find examples of what to do, and what not to do when considering a Facebook picture.  I’ll leave you all to Googling and seeing the results I did.  After spending a few too many minutes on this, I gave up.  There are WAY too many examples to choose from so I’m just going to give you a couple blurbs of advice and hope that you’ll pair my advice with your own common sense and be a successful Facebooker (and job applicant…)!

[Avoid These 5 Facebook Faux Pas at Work]

Think what you’d like, but the people interviewing you (and likely their superiors) willbe looking you up on Facebook.  They will be Googling you and they will be doing their homework.

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