Promoting yourself online and through social media is essential to scoring a job in today’s society. It’s important to develop the right skills to adequately market who you are to catch the eye of potential employers. IU instructors and lecturers who know their stuff spill their secrets to earn you that job.
It all starts with simply having accounts.
“You have to start somewhere, so you have to exist, first of all,” Carrie Ritchie, adjunct instructor of Social Media in the Newsroom, says.
This is the first step to marketing yourself online. Many college students already have a Twitter and Facebook account. These are the accounts that most employers will look at when making hiring decisions.
Ritchie also recommends being on LinkedIn to market yourself as a professional.
“If you have your accounts set to private, go ahead and go into your privacy in account settings and make those public,” Ritchie says.
There is no such thing as privacy on social media, Ritchie says. Employers are still able to find you as well as the things you post. When your account is private, employers might wonder what you’re attempting to hide when most likely you aren’t hiding anything.
“Instead of hiding behind a protected account, learn to use social media responsibly,” Ritchie says.
Using social media in a responsible way includes being mindful of what you post, as potential employers could see them. You can even promote yourself for the job you want by posting links to work you’ve done related to your field.
Ritchie emphasizes developing a social media persona based on career goals and interests. Good ways to do so include posting content related to a career as well as modifying the biography section to reflect career goals.
“Adjust your profile to reflect who you want to be,” Ritchie says.
Social media is a great tool to search for and connect with prospective employers and others applying for the same positions. By searching a company, a related topic or hash tag, it’s easy to find other users interacting with the company’s social media accounts.
“Follow other people who share content about those topics because you’re wanting to establish yourself as an expert in that field,” Ritchie says. “You’re going to want to seek out other experts in the field. Draw their attention and see what they’re posting. See if you can share some of what they’re posting.”
LinkedIn is also a great tool for reaching a company’s current employees.
“You can see what their education and experiences are so you can understand what they’ve done to get where they are and get this dream job,” Ritchie says. “You can model yourselves after them and if you want you can send them an invitation to connect.”
Ritchie also stresses professional social media etiquette. Profiles need a first and last name in the given field as well as a middle initial if you have a common name.
“Make sure, on Twitter particularly, that your handle is as close to your full name as possible and that it’s not something completely goofy,” Ritchie says
Keep handles professional to make sure employers don’t wonder what your real name is. It’s also important to be sensible when choosing a profile picture.
“No beer cans, no illicit drugs, no goofy hand gestures,” Ritchie says. “Something of your face, people can tell its you and you’re smiling and look nice, not disheveled from a night of partying.”
Header photos can also promote you as a job candidate by choosing a photo advertising your work or something job-related, Ritchie says.If you have a personal website or portfolio, you should add a link in your bio.
A website or online portfolio can give you an advantage among competitors for a job or internship. Journalism Lecturer Andrew Koop steers students towards Wordpress.org as a means to creating an online website or portfolio.
“One can download open source files to create an individually hosted portfolio,” Koop says. “This gives the individual a lot of control and ownership over content and structure.”
Koop’s class, Building an Online Portfolio, teaches students to create their own website from the ground up, an experience he finds to be empowering.
“One of the most exiting things to me about portfolio building is the number of choices that are available to cheaply host a website if you have the proper sense of adventure, curiosity and motivation,” Koop says.
Koop provides examples to easily update a website, from writing a new blog post or uploading a photo from the iOS Wordpress app.
In an increasingly mobile world, marketing yourself online through social media and personal online portfolios is important to make yourself known to professionals and even excel above other applicants.
“Social media is this great tool when used correctly and these days all employers are looking at it,” Ritchie says. “It can be an asset or it can be something that sets you back. Make it the reason you get a job and not the reason you don’t.”
