How to Use Social Media to Help Your Career

Social media can be an integral part of your job search or career building—if you use it correctly. If you don’t, even information you consider private like a photo posted on Facebook or a random comment on Twitter, could cost you your job and unexpectedly damage your career.

Discover how you can use social media to boost your career. Plus, get tips on what not to do on social media so you don’t inadvertently damage your reputation or credibility as a candidate with your posts, photos, or likes. 

How Social Media Can Help Your Career

Social job searching involves using social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for job searching. Social media is used by both job seekers who are looking for employment opportunities, and companies looking to hire.

Hiring managers and recruiters use social media to source candidates, to post jobs, and to accept job applications. Social media job searching sites can help hiring managers to get a clearer sense of potential employees and their backgrounds before they have even interacted. Social media makes it easy for recruiters to understand you better: your likes, dislikes, and how you might fit within the company. 

Plus, social media sites are often an informal route to finding out about job opportunities. People in your network may share details of job opportunities before they’re even posted on the company website. 

How to Use Social Media in Your Job Search 

Follow these strategies to harness the power of social media for your job search. 

Invest time in building your social network. You’ll want to have a strong foundation in place even before you try using social media sites within your job search. You should be prepared to be found on social media, whether it is a recruiter viewing your profile or an employer who you reached out to first.

Pick a platform (or two). Social media can eat up a lot of time, and not always productively. Rather than creating a presence on all platforms, therefore, consider focusingon just one or two. 

Select which social media sites to use based on your industry — for instance, if you work in a visual field, Instagram may make sense, whereas marketers may find Twitter a better time investment. Nearly everyone, in every field, will benefit from having an up-to-date LinkedIn profile. 

Keep your profile up to date. Make sure your LinkedIn profile is comprehensively completed with your most recent employment information, and take responsibility for keeping it up to date. Being proactive when it comes to social media can position you so you are prepared to job search at any time — when you need to find a job or when you’re are looking for a change. 

Ensure your social profiles are work-appropriate if they are public. It’s common for employers to Google candidates, so make sure your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and any other social account don’t contain anything that could hinder you from getting a job.

It’s very important to consider your online presence, as more and more employers have been expanding their hiring procedures to incorporate social networking sites.

Stay active online. Talk to your connections on Twitter or the other networking sites. Join Groups on LinkedIn and Facebook, post and join the discussion. Be engaged and proactive in your communications.

Using Facebook in Your Career

Facebook used to be a place primarily for sharing photos and details from your day. But these days, Facebook offers plenty of opportunities for job searchers. Some ways to use Facebook in your job search include: 

• Joining relevant Facebook Groups
• Sharing that you’re looking for opportunities 
• Searching for jobs on the Facebook Jobs board 

Using Twitter in Your Career

Twitter is a valuable tool for keeping in touch with your network and finding job opportunities. Here are a few ways to use Twitter to further your career: 

• Develop and promote your professional brandby posting about your industry and promoting your own work 
• Connect with others — follow the big names in your industry as well as relevant publications 
• Search for jobs and connect with recruiters.

What Not to Do on Social Media

Social networking sites are a great way to connect with others, stay in touch with your network, and find out about job opportunities. But your behavior and posts on these networks also have the potential to do damage to your reputation or make you appear like an unsuitable candidate to employers. Here’s what not to do on social platforms: 

• Share inappropriate photos or content: If your profile photos showcases you chugging a beer, you may want to reconsider. Same goes for angry or obscene language in posts. Even on personal accounts, do not post sexist, racist, or bigoted comments. 
• Go negative about your company: If you complain about your current boss or colleagues, recruiters will wonder if you’ll do the same if hired by their company. You should also avoid posting confidential company information. 

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How to Get a Promotion While Working Remotely

More than ever, businesses are operating remotely. For employees gunning for a promotion in the new landscape, the rules and conventions are murky at best. 

A manager might feel less accessible over Zoom, or the distance may make it harder to demonstrate success. It may also feel difficult to gauge the state of the company when you’re out of the office.

But these are surmountable hurdles, according to Lindsey Rogers, leadership coach and founder of Alchemi. Remote work may be indefinite in some companies, so it’s important to embrace the digital reality and go for it.

“It’s absolutely possible to be promoted remotely,” said Rogers. “Don’t wait.” 

5 Tips for Getting Promoted When You’re Working Remotely

Here are some of Rogers’s tips for landing a promotion while working from home.

1. Avoid Making Assumptions

Many people don’t go for promotions because they’ve made unfounded assumptions, according to Rogers. The pandemic may seem like a terrible time to ask for a promotion, for example. But while it is true that many companies are struggling, others are actually thriving. 

“I watch clients self-limit themselves all the time. They assume they know the situation the company is in,” said Rogers. “Especially with women, it’s that internal glass ceiling.” 

Rogers said that if employees are afraid to put themselves out there they should ask themselves why and avoid any conjecture. 

Until you’ve had conversations with higher-ups or consulted company job postings, you won’t know whether or not a promotion is feasible. 

2. It’s a Process, Not Just One Conversation

Employees often envision asking for a promotion as one nerve-wracking, momentous conversation. That’s a myth, Rogers said.

Even if you’re remote, you should insist on a regular weekly check-in with your manager on a video chat platform. This is a great way to discuss your successes of the week, stay on top of company information, and lay out your inquiries. 

“You don’t have to do everything in one conversation. Get into a rhythm,” said Rogers. “Being proactive with your communication shows excellent leadership.” 

Bring up your career goals one week, for example, and ask your boss if they believe a promotion is the next step. Ask what skills are needed to achieve the promotion, and demonstrate that you have utilized these skills at the next meeting. Ultimately, if your manager is on your team, they will help you get a promotion approved.

3. Proactively Build and Maintain Relationships Online

In a remote culture, it’s difficult to connect with people if they’re not directly working with you. Rogers recommended that employees proactively reach out to various colleagues and maintain those relationships, even if it’s over email.

Share work that you’re proud of and credit those involved, for example. Send colleagues praise when they hit a benchmark. Send a friendly, gracious response to emails sent to you, if appropriate. Try to work directly with as many people as possible in and out of your team, if possible.

When it comes time to ask for a promotion, you’ll have built an army of allies.

“It’s just as important as ever to have examples of your work and testimonials from others,” said Rogers. 

4. Recognize the Remote Advantages

Some aspects of remote operations could work in your favor when it comes to seeking a promotion. Use them to your advantage, Rogers said. 

Remote work gives you the opportunity to show your success in ways that have nothing to do with your office presence, for example. This is a particular boon for people who have children or busy home lives. 

“You’ll be judged on your results more than whether or not someone sees you at your desk until 7 o’clock at night,” said Rogers.

Also, many people aren’t great at communicating over Zoom, Slack or email. This makes it easy to stand out if you put in the effort to communicate well and dress professionally, Rogers said.

5. Move Up Through a Different Company

If you’re not getting the answers you want at your current position, consider switching companies and moving up via a different ladder. It may seem like a risky, impossible idea during the pandemic, but never assume. 

“If you’re seeing a lot of roadblocks, it’s time to wonder if it’s easier to get a higher level position elsewhere,” said Rogers. “That’s really scary, but people are hiring good people. If we assume that it’s not possible, it will be. If we ask how might it be possible, it’s more likely we can find the potential ways we’re going to move forward.”

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Free Tools to Match Your Skills to Jobs

Are you looking to change jobs, but aren’t sure what you’d like to do in your next position? The skills you have that can be applied to a variety of occupations are called transferable skills. Those skills can help you switch jobs or even careers without investing in continuing education or a degree. 

Use Your Current Skills to Get Hired for a Different Job

Deciding what you want to do can be hard though, especially when you may not even be familiar with the types of jobs you’re qualified to do. It can be a challenge to discover how you can use the skills you have in a different occupation, but there are tools that can help you match your skills to jobs. These skill-matching tools are designed to help you decide what your next new position could look like.

Once you’ve generated a list of jobs, you’ll be able to narrow down the list based on your preferences. You can include jobs that sound like they’d be interesting, that pay what you need to earn to make ends meet, or that get you on a career track that’s a better fit than your current one. You’ll be able to exclude jobs that don’t appeal, or don’t tie in with your professional or personal goals.

Here are some free tools that show you how to match your skills to possible job options, how to upgrade your skills if you need to, and how to write your cover letter and resume to show prospective employers that you’re a strong candidate for the job.

Tools That Match Skills to Jobs

CareerOneStop Skills Matcher

Use CareerOneStop’s Skills Matcher to rate your expertise on 40 key workplace skills, then review a list of career options that are a match for your highest-rated skills. 

LinkedIn Career Explorer

LinkedIn’s Career Explorer tool works a bit differently. With this tool, you enter your current occupation and LinkedIn will then show you similar jobs, how your skills overlap with the skills required for the new job, and openings in your area. If you’re in a hurry to make a change, you can use LinkedIn’s “Easy Apply” process, which allows you to apply using your LinkedIn profile.

My Next Move

If you’re new to the workforce or have been out of it for a while, use My Next Move to search careers by keyword, browse careers listed by industry, or answer some questions to generate some ideas for what you’d like to do.

mySkillsmyFuture

Use CareerOneStop’s mySkillsmyFuture tool by entering your current or previous occupation. You’ll get a list of jobs that match, how much they pay, educational requirements, and job listings.

O*NET OnLine Skills Search

Use this Skills Search to select from six major groups of skills to create a customized list of your skills. Then you’ll be able to view a list of occupations that use those skills, and see how close a match you are to the job.

How to Promote Your Skills

What if you have the right skills for the type of job you’re seeking, but aren’t sure how to show employers you have them? One easy way to promote your skills is to take some online skills tests and add your certificates and badges to your resume, LinkedIn profile, and the job sites where you have posted a profile.

How to Upgrade Your Skills

What should you do if you have some, but not all, of the skills you need for a job switch?

If you need more skills, Lifehack has a list of free online education sites you can use. These aren’t all free, but Lifewire has a list of the top 10 educational websites for online courses. If you’re interested in gaining certification, check out CareerOneStop’s certification finder.

Tip: Especially when it comes to computer skills, you may already have some of the skills employers are looking for.

Tweak Your Resume 

If you take the time to tweak your resume each time you apply for a job, it’ll be more of a match for the job you’re applying for. One way to do this is to add a professional summary that highlights the skills the employer is seeking. 

Highlight Your Skills in Your Cover Letter

When you’re searching for a job in a different line of work, you’ll need to show the employer that you have the skills they are looking for. To up your chances of getting selected for an interview, take the time to write a cover letter that conveys to the employer how you match the job. 

Take a look at the requirements listed in the job posting, and write a few sentences about how you meet them. That way, you’ll be making it clear to the hiring manager how you’re a good fit.

Use Your Interview to Showcase Your Skills

Your job interview will give you the opportunity to explain to the interviewer that you have the skills they need. Share examples of how you’ve gained the skills you need (even if you haven’t used them in previous roles), and how you’ve used them within your job roles. 

As with your resume and cover letter, your goal is to show your prospective employer that you have the skills they need to be their next new hire.

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Starting A New Job? 3 Common Mistakes To Avoid

You finally landed a new job at your dream company. Now, it is time to prepare for your first week, your first month, and your first 90 days. What steps can you take to effectively prepare for your new job? How do you ensure success as you onboard at your new company? What mistakes should you avoid at your new company?

Mistakes To Avoid When Starting A New Job

Here are three mistakes to avoid to ensure you successfully hit the ground running in your new role:

1. Not conducting a listening tour at your new organization.

While it may be tempting to enter your new organization and immediately take action, you want to avoid the common mistake of moving too swiftly without first building relationships. Subsequently, you want to devote significant time developing relationships, gaining influence, and understanding your new company’s culture during your first 90 days at your new organization. After all, you cannot successfully implement changes operating in a silo.

One way to help convert your ideas into action is by conducting a listening tour at your new organization. Meet with your most important stakeholders to hear their key concerns, allow them the opportunity to voice their major barriers and roadblocks, and learn how your role can help set your stakeholders up for success.

Additionally, take time to get to know your colleagues and clients on a personal level during your first 90 days. Those initial few months in your new job are an opportunity to really leverage being the new employee within the organization. Aim for at least one to two coffee chats per day as you ramp up at your new company.

2. Speaking more than you listen.

Next, I want you to think about the relationships at your new organization like a bank account. You want to make notable relationship deposits before you attempt to take relationship withdraws. This is because your account will quickly become overdrawn if you take large relationship withdraws before you make relationship deposits.

You can mitigate the common mistake of overdrawing too early by listening more than you speak during your onboarding period. This is particularly important if you are a manager or executive who needs to influence large groups of cross-functional stakeholders.

I challenge my career and executive coaching clients to only ask coaching questions during their listening tours and initial stakeholder meetings. While this is more challenging than it sounds, it allows my clients to demonstrate their coaching prowess as well as collect critical information that will set them up for future success in their new organizations.

3. Forgetting to revisit your 90-day new job onboarding plan.

Finally, remember to take time to update – or create – your 90-day onboarding plan. Although you may have developed a draft onboarding plan during your interview process, you want to iterate the plan after you join your new employer and get to know the company, the culture, and the distinct pain points facing the organization.

Consider asking yourself these questions as you develop your onboarding plan and strategy:

• What pain points and areas of opportunity were uncovered during my listening tour?
• What actions can I take to immediately add value to my new employer?
• How can I make my boss and my boss’s boss look good?

This list is just a start to help you hit the ground running in your next role. As you enter your new organization, remember to get buy-in for your ideas, speak more than you listen, and revisit your onboarding plan. You’ve got this!

Guest Author Kyle Elliott, MPA, CHES is the founder, career coach, and interview coach behind CaffeinatedKyle.com. His goal is simple – to help people find jobs they LOVE. He is an official member of the invitation-only Forbes Coaches Council as well as a member of the Gay Coaches Alliance.

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How To Write An Effective Cover Letter

Cover letters are one of the most stressful parts of a job search. How do you structure the cover letter?  What do you include in your cover letter? How do you use a cover letter to stand out in today’s saturated job market? The list of questions seems endless.

As a career coach, a professional resume writer, and a former hiring manager, I have read more cover letters than I can count. Even if you have a warm introduction to the recruiter or hiring manager, your cover letter is a strategic way to stand out in the saturated job market. The cover letter is your first opportunity to help recruiters and hiring managers to understand if, how, and why you are the right person for the company and role.

4 Steps for Writing an Effective Cover Letter

Here are four steps to write an effective cover letter:

1. Begin with what drew you to the company and position.

 Start your cover letter off strong by including what drew you to the company and the position you are applying to. This not only shows the recruiter you intentionally applied to their opening but also why you are a fit for that specific requisition.

 Be careful with length here. You do not have to go on for paragraphs. Highlight one to two key points in just a few sentences. Share what exactly about the company and position drew you to submit your application for consideration.

 While brevity is key to a successful cover letter, avoid being vague with your reasons of interest. Your reasons need to be specific enough that you can not use the same reasoning for wanting to work for Facebook that you could at LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok, for example.

 Customizing the introduction of your cover letter will take a little time, but it is one of the few aspects of your cover letter that you need to customize for each job application.

2. Highlight what sets you apart from other job applicants.

With a clear, punchy introduction of why you are the perfect fit for the requisition completed, it is now time for the body of your cover letter. A lot of job seekers use the body of the cover letter as an opportunity to summarize their resumes. This is a mistake. Simply rehashing your experience, accomplishments, and skills not only makes your cover letter unnecessary but is also a missed opportunity to stand out from the crowd.

Leverage this valuable career real estate to make a powerful first impression and help the recruiter put you in the “yes!” pile. You can do this by using a handful of bullet points to clearly explain what sets you apart from other candidates. You can also be as bold as to say, “Here is what sets me apart from other [Role you are applying to],” then include three main points, backed by documented proof from your career.

As you write the core of your cover letter, remember to be specific with stories and examples from your career. Inject numbers, percentages, and factoids where appropriate and helpful.

3. End with a clear call-to-action.

 It is true that you only get one first impression. It is also true that you only get one last impression. Avoid the mistake of ending your cover letter with a passive statement about your interest in the company and availability for an interview. Or, even worse, do not be the job seeker who forgets to include their contact information.

Use the final few sentences of the cover letter to thank the recruiter for their time and consideration. Also, use this space to reinforce your experience and interest. Harness the power of assertive communication to share you are confident and ready for an interview. This may look like:

“You may reach me at [phone] or [email] to arrange my interview.”

4. Consider a testimonial to set you apart from other job seekers.

 While you can say you are fabulous, it is much more convincing if a current or former colleague or client describes your fabulousness, their working relationship with you, and the results you deliver.

 In this article, I share three effective ways to add personality to your resume, including the use of testimonials. Consider including a testimonial in your cover letter to highlight your personality and provide the recruiter with social proof. You can include the testimonial at the top of your cover letter, in the body of the letter, or right below your sign-off.

With these cover letter tips in mind, you are ready to make a great first impression. Go out there and share what makes you fabulous. You’ve got this!

 Guest Author Kyle Elliott, MPA, CHES is the founder and career coach behind CaffeinatedKyle.com. As a result of working with Kyle, senior managers and executives have landed jobs at Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and nearly every other Fortune 100/500 company you can think of. They have also found happiness.

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