Job Search: Google+ As A Complement To LinkedIn

When it comes to social media and job hunting, everyone immediately thinks of LinkedIn and rightly so. A great LinkedIn profile (which we can accomplish for you here at The Imagemakers, Ink!)  can go a very long way towards giving a prospective employer a good overview of your skill sets and abilities. So while we can all agree that LinkedIn is a must, you should also be aware that there’s an up and comer that can help you in more ways than you may have thought of  when it comes to conducting a job search. Who’s the new guy? Well it’s Google+ and here’s how it can complement your LinkedIn Profile.

 In a word, “personality”, which when you think about it, is the one aspect that LinkedIn lacks with it’s Dragnet like “just the facts mam” way of doing things. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing, it’s just not a complete picture of who you are and what you bring to the table.

I would argue that a well manicured Google+ profile (with smartly placed public posts and photos) can act as an complement to LinkedIn that can shine a little light on your fun side, intelligence and interests that LinkedIn has a hard time with because of it’s obvious “business” mission. Of course when I say “well manicured” I’m talking about a public profile and posts that stay away from controversy and nonsense (save those posts for your “close friends” circle) and that paint a positive picture of you to anyone on the outside looking in.

In the case of job hunting that would be any HR professional or decision maker who Googles you (and yes, they do Google you) looking to find out more about you other than just what’s contained in your LinkedIn profile. Add to that the fact that Google+ is tightly integrated into the rest of the Google ecosystem (Google docs and other business tools as well as it’s own cool features) and I believe that it can be a very real complement to LinkedIn when “they” go searching…and trust me…”they” will. So give them some fun stuff! Give them some intelligent stuff! Give them some interesting stuff!

Who knows, it may be just the right “stuff” that gets you the job!

~Stu

How A Personal Web Page Can Expedite Your Job Search

Personal Domain

Have you ever read that you should own your personal “name” domain. Well, there are a lot of very good reasons for owning your name domain with the primary one being that you can control and protect it from being used nefariously or prevent anyone from  piggy-backing off of your success. When it comes to job hunting though, there are several reason why you should not only own it, but actually use it to expedite your job search.

Google, Google, Google

While this may seem like a no brainer, a personal web page can be used as a very positive synopsis of your work and life that YOU control. You control the content, you control the message and you control the picture it paints of you. Why is this important? Well in a word…Google. Once your personal page is indexed by Google (Bing and the other search engines) it will almost certainly move on to the first page of results returned by the search engine when someone Googles your name. In fact, more often than not I’ve seen it return as the “top” hit within a very short time for most people because your name is a part of the url.

This means that you get the first crack at telling your story to anyone who Googles you, simple as that. Trust me, they will click on joeblow.com if they’ve just Googled Joe Blow. It’s really just simple human nature and also one of the reasons why the “name” domain rises so fast in search results.

Opportunity

This, as you may have surmised by now, gives you an enormous opportunity to “speak” to a potential employer in a way that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to because Googling you happens before any interview, usually after having been made aware of you through a resume or referral. Oh, and if you think that employers aren’t Googling think again. In today’s world, and especially with jobs as hard to come by as they are right now, employers are using every tool at their disposal to find out as much information as they can about potential candidates and “Googling” is about as easy as it gets.

Bottom Line

The bottom line here is that if you’re in a job search, buy your domain name (they can be had for as little as $10 or less a year) and get something positive up for employers to see. We here at the Imagemakers, Ink! offer personal web pages as one of our many career services because we know how important the web (and Google, Bing, etc.) has become to a successful job search. If you have a common name, there are ways around that and we can help, just give us a call!

~Stu

Why On-Line Resumes Rock!

At The Imagemakers, Ink!, two of  the services that we’ve embraced in order to give our clients an additional advantage in today’s job market are social media and technology.

If you look around, you’ll see that most “resume” companies don’t and can’t do this because frankly, they just don’t have any expertise in these areas. It’s why we consider ourselves to be much more of a full-service, personal marketing firm rather than “just” resume writers.

We offer so much more than resumes because we know that a great resume or bio is just one piece of a much more complex puzzle when it comes to finding a new position, especially at the professional and executive levels.

With that in mind, I’m going to offer a couple of reasons why we believe having an on-line or web-based resume (just one of our “technology” offerings) can make your search more productive and even easier, oftentimes leading to your finding a new position faster than would otherwise be the case.

1. In a word, “simplicity”. By simply sending a link in an email, text or chat (or from anywhere else you post the link) your resume or bio is instantly available to be viewed on any device with a web browser.  Of course, this now gives you access far beyond the computer world and into the growing tablet and smartphone universe.

What this means is that potential employers can read your resume as they wait for their flights at the airport without “needing” a computer to do it. Their iPhone or iPad will do just fine for finding out that you’re the perfect fit for that position they’ve been trying to fill.

2. The language of the web. While this may be a little crossover with number one, I can’t stress enough that your web-based resume will be specifically formatted with the “language” of the web. Good old HTML. What this means is that any decision maker viewing your resume/bio doesn’t need MS Word, doesn’t need a PDF reader, doesn’t need Flash or any other proprietary format to learn about you and your qualifications.

This is critical because the web browser is, by far, the most ubiquitous way to view information these days and your resume or bio should have the advantage of being able to be viewed in one. Anyway, hopefully you’ll find the case for a web-based resume compelling as you sit there reading this…in your web browser!

-Stu