BCjobs Blog

799 friends on facebook – Wow! Sounds sort of like an accomplishment doesn’t it?

But, who do you really know out of those 799 people? Guess who is reading the resume you just submitted to that huge advertising firm you really want a job with? Remember Ryan, that older guy from high school? Ryan has you on facebook (you never spoke in high school besides that one time you accidentally walked into him) and he is now searching your profile and notices all the party pictures, that not so friendly page you “liked”, and your recent status update of having a few double caesers on your lunch break.

Okay. So you’ve just come back from a networking event and have a pile of business cards you’ve collected from all the folks you’ve interacted with. Now what?
In the past, we might have input the information into our computer’s address book and emailed everyone a followup letter. And while this is a great idea, once the initial followup action has been taken, that’s where it may end for a number of your contacts. Let’s face it…. life is busy and out of sight means out of mind.

Has Twitter Reached Job Hunting Tool Status?
Today I watched another webinar, this time on ‘How to Use Twitter to Impress Recruiters’ by JT O’Donnell, founder of Careerealism.com. She provided five tips when using social media to find a job. They include:

Using Bio Keywords: This includes thinking about what key words people (recruiters) would use to find you and including them in your bio. She suggests looking at some relevant job postings, finding the prominent words and including them.

Now that the holiday season is over, it’s back to work! If the thought of meeting new people at a business event sends a chill up your spine, you’re not alone. For many of us networking is something we dread. Unfortunately, these days, it’s not what you know. It’s who you know or who knows you, that really counts for business success. And even though tradeshows and business mixers can be intimidating for anyone, they are also the perfect opportunity to network and build business relationships. To feel more at ease at your next event, prepare ahead of time, with full stomach, the right attitude and the right business tools.

I recently nagged a client to get her LinkedIn profile fully up and running. She emailed me the other day to say that she got an email from a recruiter within 2 days of doing it. A new survey explains why.

Imagine you’ve walked into a networking event only to meet a potential employer you’ve been dying to snag an interview with. This is your chance. You need to make a good impression, and quickly. But you’re not sure what to say.

Many people are daunted by the prospect of establishing a new relationship, or leveraging an existing one, as a career strategy. Not all are born communicators, not all are outgoing by nature. No matter how awkward or painful your initial attempts, there are compelling reasons to begin practicing networking.

This year, did you make a number of interesting contacts while networking to find a job? Did you meet people who gave you job leads or forwarded your resume? Are you wondering how you are going to keep those connections warm? Is your challenge that you don’t have a really good reason to reconnect?

Our columns at BC Jobs focus on using networking to get a job or put you on the right trajectory for your career path. But recent research published in the prestigious journal Biologist found that the number of hours per day humans interact has fallen by two thirds in recent decades, from 6 hours in 1987 to 2 hours in 2007.

Do you think the only people who will read this article are going to be a handful of people who get anxious networking? Well, here’s a news flash, 80% of the people we survey prior to teaching a workshop on Positive Networking® tell us they don’t like networking—they really don’t like networking!