How to Use Social Media as a Job Seeker to Enhance Your Chances of Getting Hired

According to a survey by Career Builder, 70% of employers say that they use social media platforms to research candidates who want to work in their companies. 

Not only that, about 57% of employers mention that social media content has caused them not to hire candidates.

What does this mean?

Social media has gone beyond a place for sharing your thoughts with friends and families alone. If you’re a job seeker, you can make or mar your chances of getting a job through your social media activities.

How exactly can you use social media as a job seeker and enhance your chances of getting hired?

That’s exactly what you’ll learn after reading this post.

Let’s get started.

Why Should You Bother About Social Media as a Job Seeker?

Even if you’re not an active social media user, you should care about it and start using it if you’re a job seeker. 

The reason is simple. 

More than half of the world’s population uses social media, according to Data Reportal. 

This means that there’s a high chance that your hiring manager and employers are on social media. So if you don’t have a profile, you’ll lose out on a lot of opportunities.

Not only that, recent statistics indicate that 87% of recruiters use LinkedIn and 55% of them use Facebook. This shows that most recruiters are active on social media and looking to hire new employees on the platforms.

Aside from the fact that recruiters and hiring managers are active on social media, here are some other reasons to use it as a job seeker:

• It helps you to build your own personal brand.

• It provides you with the opportunity to network with decision-makers in different companies.

• It gives you more insights into the company you want to work for, their culture, current employees, and so on.

• It makes you known to hiring managers who are actively scouting for new talents on social media.

• It helps to enhance your social skills as an individual.

Now that you know how important social media is for you as a job seeker, let’s proceed to the specific things you should be doing on these platforms to enhance your chances of getting a job.

7 Simple Yet Effective Ways to Enhance Your Chances of Getting a Job on Social Media

To enhance your chances of getting a job via social media, here are seven things you should do.

1. Have a Clean Social Media Record

Most recruiters and hiring managers take a look at your social media history before considering you for any position. In most cases, they check to see if you’re a good fit for their company’s culture based on your previous activities. If you have a bad record on social media, this might work against you.

Take, for instance, if your Facebook profile is filled with pictures and videos of you partying hard with friends at night—that might put a dent in your image as someone who isn’t serious with their professional career.

The first thing you should do as a job seeker is to review and clean your existing social media accounts to make sure they’re appropriate for employers. If there are photos and videos that are questionable, you can either delete or hide them. That way, potential employers will see you as a true professional.

Alternatively, you can create a separate professional account where you actively post about your career, what you’re currently engaged with, how you’re upskilling yourself, and so many more.

2. Create an Online Portfolio 

Once you have a clean social media record, then you should proceed to create an online portfolio. This helps you to showcase yourself to recruiters and potential employers.

A typical online portfolio includes the following:

• Name

• Professional qualifications

• Skills

• Summary of who you are

• Samples of projects you’ve successfully executed and completed

• What you care about

• Volunteer experience

• And so on

For example, if you want to work as a workflow software consultant, you can share samples of how you’ve helped companies create a workflow that they use in their day-to-day activities.

You can use platforms such as about.me and Linktree to create your own online portfolio.

3. Engage in Meaningful Discussions 

There are a lot of discussions happening on social media. One of the ways to enhance your chances of getting found and hired by recruiters is to join and engage in these meaningful discussions.

While a lot of people take a passive approach to social media, if you really want to get noticed as a job seeker, you should be active.

What this means is that you should share your thoughts on discussions that are related to your industry. One rule of thumb is that any comment you leave on any of these discussions is helpful and valuable. That way, recruiters will see you as someone who actually knows what they’re doing.

To join these discussions, you should consider using the relevant hashtags to your industry. For example, if you’re looking for marketing roles on Twitter, you can join relevant discussions using hashtags such as #MarketingTwitter, #SEOtwitter, #brandingtwitter, #CMIworld, #Contentmarketing, and so on.

4. Use LinkedIn Strategically

As a job seeker, you should prioritize LinkedIn over other social media platforms.

Here is why…

LinkedIn is a social media platform for professionals. And it’s built with recruiters and job seekers in mind. There are a lot of features on LinkedIn that you should leverage as a job seeker to enhance your chances of getting a job.

For example, when filling your LinkedIn profile, you should use a title that corresponds to the industry you’re looking for a role in. That way, your name will pop up when recruiters search for that keyword on LinkedIn.

Another way to show recruiters that you’re looking for a job is to use the #Opentowork frame on your profile. This shows hiring managers that you’re actively searching for a company to work with. This is a great way of enhancing your chances of getting hired.

Also, you should ask your teachers, colleagues, and former supervisors to endorse you for some specific skills related to your industry and write a recommendation for you too. This shows hiring managers that you’re a trusted person with credible individuals who can vouch for you.

Finally, you should leverage the enormous networking opportunities that are available on LinkedIn. To achieve this, you should be actively writing posts on the platform. Not only that, you should be commenting on posts of other individuals and influencers you respect in your niche.

Here is a guide with some additional LinkedIn tips that’ll help you greatly as a job seeker.

5. Join Relevant Industry Groups

Irrespective of the role you want to get hired for, there are groups on various social media platforms where other professionals hang out and discuss issues affecting your industry.

As a job seeker, you should join these relevant industry groups. That way, you can get acquainted with the latest industry news. Not only that, members usually share job opportunities and insights with everyone in the group.

Your best bet is to join these groups on Facebook and LinkedIn. A quick search with the name of your industry will reveal some of these groups on these platforms. For Twitter, the best way to join relevant industry discussions is through hashtags.

6. Show Your Expertise and Personality

Recruiters want to work with people they see as experts, and there’s no way they can know that you’re one if you are not constantly showing your expertise on social media.

One of the best ways to do this is to consistently post valuable and helpful content on your social media profiles, especially LinkedIn.

For example, if you’re a digital marketer, you should be actively posting relevant content related to social media marketing, content writing, SEO, paid advertising, and so on. When you do, hiring managers will identify you as an expert, hence enhancing your chances of getting hired.

Aside from showing your expertise, you should also let recruiters know your personality. You can do this by posting personal stuff that you care about such as family, pets, neighborhood, food, and so on. You can do this mostly on Twitter and Instagram.

Showing your expertise and personality are great ways to bring your professional and personal lives online. That way, recruiters can make decisions faster if they think you’re someone they’ll like to work with.

7. Update Your Social Media Profiles Regularly

A common mistake that job seekers make is to create their social media profiles and leave it at that. That’s a recipe for not getting noticed or even hired on these platforms.

Ensure that all your social media profiles are up-to-date and they have accurate and relevant information about you.

For example, if you just got certified in a specific course, you should update your social media profiles with it. Also, if you just accomplished a career goal, you should update your social media profiles as well with the information.

The more updated your social media profiles are, the better. That way, recruiters and hiring managers will see you as someone who cares about personal development and is always committed to achieving their goals.

Conclusion 

Social media has come to stay. If you’re a job seeker, the way you use it can make or mar your chances of getting hired.

In this post, I’ve shared with you why social media is important for you as a job seeker. I also showed you seven simple yet effective ways to enhance your chances of getting hired on these social media platforms.

Which of these strategies are you currently implementing as a job seeker on social media?

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