Every time I visit an online job board, I am always reminded of how fierce the competition for jobs is, especially after every high school or college graduation when the market is swamped with thousands of both old and new hopefuls. As far as I’ve observed, it’s been like this for so many years. One thing has changed the picture though – outdated job search approaches don’t work anymore, modern strategies have arisen and one of these strategies can be found in social media.

Going online does not work its magic the way it does before. Nowadays, it takes more than just doing an online job search, submitting a resume and then waiting for a call, job seekers should take advantage of what social media has to offer as well. To do this effectively, one has to target his search cautiously and wisely, especially online, then make his “online social life” do the searching and then maybe more.

•             Twitter – an account in this site can be very useful for job seekers. Twittering less than 160 words of updates every now and then may sound useless when you are seeking for a job but if you know what to look for then this site can be very beneficial. Nowadays, more and more companies post job openings on Twitter because they know that within hours, they can find a large number of qualified applicants. Aside from this fact, these companies also tweet valuable company information that could help job seekers land a job in their company like preferred resume formats or cover letter contents. If one can’t find such posts, then he can start using specific Twitter amenities like “Tweet my Jobs” wherein he can find industry-specific jobs with adequate information on how to post a resume and cover letter.

•             Blogs and Business Sections – browsing industry blogs and business sections of industry-related news site can be helpful as well, especially those that are in the same region where a jobseeker wants to land a job. There are websites that allow jobseekers to create a list of their favorite websites and blogs and even personalize the feeds to include only those that will give them information on job openings. This is just akin to bookmarking companies and their online career postings.

•             Facebook – instead of posting something to find a job, one has to “un-post” something to land a job. This means that jobseekers should be mindful of their online social presence and not post questionable updates and status which would make prospect employers think “bad” about them. There are things that should be kept at home or kept personally, if one wants to land a good job, he should make sure that they don’t give future employers a reason to cast a bad first impression on them. This so true nowadays when companies don’t only use Facebook for branding but also for applicant screening.

•             LinkedIn – a connection with acquaintances and friends who are in the same industries or companies where one might want to find a job can be very helpful as well. Aside from this connection, one can make these acquaintances and friends as his references or even ways to be introduced to key people. Also, some companies are now seeking and hiring applicants through their LinkedIn profiles.

Social media can be of great help and very critical to job search but one thing that should be elemental to jobseekers is the relationship that their social media presence have built for them. Thus, hopeful job applicants must make sure that they optimize their social media accounts to its full potential like the way a PC optimization tool such as PC Speed Up does in optimizing computers to their full potential.

This is a guest post from Paul at www.pcspeedup.com