How are you using the Internet for your job search efforts? It’s likely that you’ve dabbled with social media and conducted research by using a search engine like Google or Bing, but with so much there, it can be overwhelming. To help simplify things, we’ll share a few tips that will help you enhance your resume, monitor your online presence and keep tabs on the relevant company, industry and market information.
#1 Help Yourself – Clean Up Your Resume, Find Career Fairs and Search for Jobs from One PlaceUS.jobs (http://us.jobs), powered by the National Labor Exchange, has many useful features. In the Career Resources section, you can access tools to:
In addition, site visitors can search a database of over 1 million unduplicated, legitimate job opportunities.
#2 Audit Yourself – Proactively Use Search Engines to Gauge Your Online Presence There have been many articles written about employers using online research and background checks to research prospective candidates. A Mashable.com article with findings from a study by a company called Reppler indicated 69% of recruiters have rejected a candidate based on content found on his or her social networking profiles. (Thankfully 68% of recruiters have also hired a candidate based on his or her presence on those networks.)By searching for your name on search engines, you can help ensure your online presence won’t harm you in the application process. For example, there may be photos tagged by friends that you didn’t realize were public. You may also see news articles or other public profiles floating around that could help, or harm, your reputation. It’s also a good time to update any stale content or delete outdated profiles.
#3 Alert Yourself – Set Up Email and RSS Alerts to Keep Tabs on Your Industry, Your Dream Employer and MoreThere are definitely perks to having access to endless amounts of data on the Internet, but it can become overwhelming to sift through all of that information efficiently. Google Alerts is a free tool that can make the process a little easier. As explained on their site, “Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your queries.” The search engine checks the web regularly to find new results. If updated results are found, Google Alerts will send them to you via email. Alerts can be provided as-it-happens, daily or weekly. You may also set up alerts as RSS feeds and use Google Reader to avoid overloading your inbox.You’ll need to set up a Google account if you don’t have one already, then visit http://www.google.com/alerts and follow the prompts. If you need some extra help, there is a very thorough support section. As a job seeker, you can use Google alerts to:
- Follow breaking news about a company you want to work for
- Monitor trends in your industry
- Find out about what’s being said by others about a company
- Keep up on your online presence
- Seek out news about companies hiring locally or expanding
These are a just a few simple tips that can be beneficial to job seekers. What other resources would you suggest?
make this simple to use,
Very helpfull, thank you,
Robert Broom
I will start any job–hands on–part time or full time. I want to work. The skilled back ground I have allows me to work at most levels in maintenance.
thank you, very helpful