Facebook takes many forms: it’s a social network, a photo album, and a game platform, among other things. However, Facebook may soon become another entity to its users: a job search site.
While there is no official jobs tool within the online platform yet, there are ways for students and recent graduates to use the social network to their advantage professionally. Here are five tips for college students to use Facebook strategically while looking for a job:
How Students Can Use Facebook For Job Search:
1. Craft privacy settings appropriately: While students should protect themselves by blocking potentially damaging content from the public, there can be a distinct advantage to crafting settings to cater to a specific company. For example, if you’re a student interested in a music company, publicly displaying your musical tastes could be beneficial, while settings may have to be more guarded if you’re interested in a Fortune 500 company.
2. Evaluate your profile picture: Although privacy settings may restrict what recruiters see on Facebook, they will be able to view your current profile picture. While employers are not supposed to discriminate, they could be influenced by a photo deemed inappropriate by their standards.
When a recruiter is looking at a job candidate’s profile picture, he or she is trying to picture that person in a professional setting.
3. Interact with companies: A student who is interested in career opportunities at a specific company should become a fan of it on Facebook.
4. Participate in Facebook groups: Monica Weber, a 2011 graduate of the College of the Holy Cross, applied to 168 jobs during her search before landing a position with a public relations firm in Boston. During this time, she interacted and networked with Holy Cross alumni and fellow job seekers in professional groups, such as the Young Professionals Network.
Recruiters who have connected with candidates on Facebook will look to see not only if the prospective employee is a member of professional groups, but if they engage in them as well.
5. Tap into your network: Getting a job has always been about who you know as much as anything else. But the ‘who you know’ is multiplied by 10 from what it might have been 10 years ago thanks to Facebook.
And with more than 800 million users worldwide, Facebook provides seemingly limitless resources and connections for job seekers.
And while not every job or connection you encounter will mesh with your career goals, the Facebook platform is a way for people to share with and support one another in the job search.
From US News