Sue Briault, Careers Adviser, follows up on her earlier blog “Research before Job Search” to explore more evidence of the power of networking.
My recent professional development activities have brought even more evidence and examples of the power and importance of developing your networks in order to find a job. Only this week I attended a very interesting conference for careers professionals at which I learned more about how my colleagues are using social networking in order to connect with people who have the power to hire or at the very least give an inside view on a career sector or company.
Helen Pownall from the University of Manchester described using the Internet and especially social media to create unprecedented opportunities to network with employers and other professionals in your areas of interest. She discussed on-line networking tools like LinkedIn, Twitter and blogs as a “must” rather than “nice to have” for job seekers. Effectively you could be come a much better informed candidate as well as raising your professional profile which might just get you hired.
For most of you Facebook will be your normal social networking medium, however LinkedIn provides a professional network which is focused on the world of work. It has members in countries around the world and includes both senior and junior managers. You can create your own profile and even include your CV. Once your in you can search for contacts. You can join groups which reflect your area of interest and communicate with people in your group to ask and answer questions as well as contribute to discussions. I have met with PhD researchers who would find this invaluable for trying to link up with specialists or experts working in the commercial world who are utilising similar or same knowledge or techniques. For example if your research area was applicable to the field of renewable energy you could identify possible information or employment contacts in smaller companies that might not otherwise be easily identifiable through other means.
A use for all students and graduates is to search for people working for a company you may be thinking of applying to. If you already have a network on LinkedIn you can see whether these potential contacts are linked to you by a third party. A second degree contact will mean that you have a contact in common. This is a reference to six degrees of separation a theory conceived by US academic Stanley Milgram, after experiments in which he asked people to pass a letter only to others they knew by name.The aim was to get it, eventually, to a named person they did not know living in another city. The average number of times it was passed on, he said, was six – hence, the six degrees of separation. This has come to be considered an urban myth although in 2008 some Microsoft researchers found it was probably true although more likely to be seven degrees of separation. LinkedIn seems to make the process easier but Pownall still reckons that approaching someone without having a contact in common, cold calling, is not any more successful through social networking than is by the old fashion direct ways of phonecalls.
The session also looked at Twitter and I have been using this on behalf of the Careers Advisory Service . Twitter is a micro-blogging site where youcan communicate your thoughts and what you are doing in “tweets” of 140 characters or less. There are many businesses on Twitter too and they are mostly using it for marketing but many professionals are using it to share knowledge and observations with their community. You can follow people. I like to follow Peter Rowlett who is the University Liaison Officer at the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. He meets a good number of mathematicians doing interesting jobs and if anything takes my fancy I can check it out on his website. It is also possible to follow topics. I follow other university careers services who are “tweeting” so I can steal their ideas! I am also alerted to news I may have missed which is relevant to my work so it is a good way of keeping up to date in your area of interest. The current awareness possibilities are obvious if you are going for an interview in a particular field. There are already examples of people finding jobs on Twitter and being headhunted through it.
At the same conference I also attended a session on digital identity. Shirley Williams, a lecturer from the University of Reading, introduced us to her project which has been to design a workbook, This is Me, to raise awareness of this important issue. She reminded us that we leave a digital footprint everytime somebody puts something about us on the Web as well as what we put there ourselves. Other people will post photographs of us, there may be reports of our successes and achievements and we log into chatroom conversations. This material remains there for an indefinite period so information can be aggregated about you by anyone including potential employers. So far in conversations Bath careers advisers have had with employers there is not much evidence that this kind of screening takes place during new graduate recruitment but you might want to think about your future employers. Having a personal and professional Facebook profile may be worth considering.
Finishing on my networking theme, this week I was reading the report from a UoBath student who went on the China Study Programme. I was most impressed to read how he had taken the opportunity to investigate the manufacturing of a product in China which was relevant to his final year project before he went. He then managed to make some appropriate contacts while away and found out even more. He said ”I would advise that all those who take part in the program in the future to set-up meetings with people and companies that would help their course or career.” That is a piece of advice I can’t argue with especially now social networking could give you so many warm leads to many potentially useful contacts.
Addition 28th July: Just read this blog article about using Twitter for job hunting http://mdalums95.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/beginner%e2%80%99s-guide-to-the-twitter-job-search-top-5-essentials/. Worth a read.
