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Why job seekers should join instead of follow on Twitter

Julie Walraven — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:33:06 +0000

Notice I said join, not follow. This is another lesson that Jim Connolly taught me. You want people to JOIN you on Twitter not follow you. Follow sounds like you are setting yourself up as a magnet. Join suggests that you are open to conversation and relationship building on Twitter.

What’s the goal of a job seeker on Twitter?

Your goal should be to build beneficial and productive relationships on Twitter. Hence the word join instead of follow.

Dictionary.com defines follow as:

to accept as a guide or leader; accept the authority of or give allegiance to: Many Germans followed Hitler.
to conform to, comply with, or act in accordance with; obey: to follow orders; to follow advice.
to imitate or copy; use as an exemplar: They follow the latest fads.

I don’t know about you but I don’t like that idea. Let’s look at the definition of join:

to bring in contact, connect, or bring or put together.
to take part with others (often followed by in ): Let’s all join in.

I like that better. I want to connect with others, to share ideas, and find common ground.

How do you join or connect with others on Twitter?

You look for common ground. If I want to find people who like dogs or in my case, German Shepherds, I could search for German Shepherds using the search button on Twitter. I might get results that look like this: https://twitter.com/#!/search/german%20shepherds It constantly changes and then I might look further to find someone giving me useful information about German Shepherds or talking about their German Shepherd. This might encourage me to join them. Before I join someone, though, I expand their stream beyond one tweet and look at what they are saying. Then I join them and ideally, I initiate conversation.

What about job search on Twitter?

You can use this example with anything else, including job search on Twitter. You can search for a company or a field and then analyze the stream to see who is really conversing as opposed to blasting and then you check if they are conversing about things you want to learn or if you want to get to know them. Then join them on Twitter.

You can also learn the latest in job search strategy by following career professionals. I have gotten to know many of my colleagues much better because of Twitter and have formed offline friendships by calling or chatting on Skype with those career professionals separated from me by many miles.

What about brands on Twitter?

Some brands blast and some brands are people. I prefer people. Eastbay Careers is a good example of a brand who is represented by a person. The bio says:

Tweets brought 2 you by Jessica Fane, Employment Coordinator for Eastbay! I am a 5-10K runner and lover of coffee!

Best part, Jessica talks to you. Her stream is friendly and she responds to you. But she is serious about answering job seeker questions that are pertinent to Eastbay careers.

Someone who is a brand but represents like Jessica does instead of just blasting positions or a steady stream of company retweets makes it easier to talk to a company. You can see the representative of other companies doing this with customer service.

Benefits of joining people on Twitter

If you focus on joining people on Twitter and join in the conversation, I believe you will build the connections you want. How do you join me on Twitter? You talk to me. I have so many people “following” me that unless they start the conversation, I won’t know they want to connect.

What do you think? See possibilities for job search on Twitter?

Stuck in your job search or just ready to move on from your existing position? Julie Walraven can help you find a new career! To find out how, Click here!

Photo Credit

The top 5 mistakes LinkedIn users often make

Julie Walraven — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:07:51 +0000

The SeaFarer

You want LinkedIn to work for you but you are not sure how.You have heard people buzzing about how great LinkedIn is for job search or building your business. Unfortunately, no one taught you how to use LinkedIn correctly.

Don’t let these common LinkedIn mistakes ruin your networking

You don’t use your banner heading effectively. The banner heading needs to feature your goals and objectives. Here is mine:They can be changed at any time but if you don’t set the banner heading in this top section, it will default to your most recent job. At no point do you want to say currently unemployed. Sell your value. If you search other people who have spent some time developing their banner headings you can see that the keywords and value they are selling will come up in searches. Don’t waste this space!
You aren’t connecting with anyone. Two to five people in your network does not make a LinkedIn network. With more than 131 million people on LinkedIn, don’t tell me you can’t find anyone to connect with. College professors, alumni members, former employers, former coworkers, community service connections. Your assignment: connect with 60 people right now. Grow that to 100 as soon as possible. Then keep going. LinkedIn will suggest people for you as you build the network. Think about connecting with the people who checked you out and watch who is watching you.
You haven’t set your name. You look like a newbie when you leave those numbers hanging off your name. Claim your name now. Specific instructions here.
Make sure that you leave a trail behind you. Set your settings so people know when you visit their profile. It could start a conversation. For one client, it was the secret to getting calls and offers from employers.
Never assume. Fill out your summary – 2000 characters waiting for you to write a compelling case for the value that you offer to them as a new employee. Complete the description below each position with clear accomplishment-driven statements. Don’t assume that they know what you do.

These tips should help improve your profile immediately. If you struggle with this, there are people like myself who can walk you through the process painlessly and get you up and running so you can use this tool to effectively market yourself.

Is “good enough” going to get you a job?

Julie Walraven — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 12:23:13 +0000

image by Thierry Draus

Every once in awhile someone asks me or another resume writer to write just the cover letter. They don’t need a resume they say — because the resume they have is “good enough.”

Well maybe…

If one of my colleagues wrote the resume but then I would suspect “Excellent” would be a better word.
And maybe if the someone spent days reading resume books, understanding the philosophy behind today’s job search and what makes a resume stand out in this economic climate against tough competition, and worked on fine-tuning their accomplishments so that they attract the interest of hiring managers, yes, maybe then their resume is good enough.

But what the person is usually are telling me is that they only want to pay for the cover letter because they don’t see the value in investing in a complete resume package much less a customized job search and career marketing package.

My clients who use Design Resumes for their career marketing and resume writing needs, however, want to stand out. They don’t want a “good enough” resume. They want to win the new position. In fact, my clients don’t just want to win the new position, they want to be able to negotiate for the salary and the benefits that they want. And guess what? They do just that!

A client I started working with in June was re-employed three weeks later in July. Here’s the beginning of his LinkedIn profile:

Throughout my career, I have thrived on challenges. If you tell me it can’t be done, I will find a way and get it done. I have had a unique ability to help the customer discover a desire for the product or service that they didn’t know they had.

I am skilled at reading people. I surprise people by telling them things that they can’t figure out how I knew about them. I have never walked out of a negotiation and not closed the deal. For me, Failure is not an option!

He is my favorite kind of client. He gets it! He’s a Regional Sales Manager and he negotiated for a much better deal than he was offered and he got it!

For him, there is no “good enough!” How about you?

Everything you need to succeed is already there

Julie Walraven — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:09:12 +0000

image by Britanny ((Halo))

You have decided that the world is working against you. It is the economy, it is your industry, it is the fault of the government, you can not win.

Really? I see job seekers and career changers every day who are so beaten down and feel like they don’t stand a chance in this current time. But they are wrong. They already have everything they need to succeed. They think they don’t but in reality, they do. How do I know? I have proven it to myself.

For my regular blog readers, they know that I made a drastic change in December of 2009. Apparently, I was oblivious to the economy because I chose at that point to drop the last of my predictable contract income from non-profits and go solo into the career industry. I’m no stranger to the career industry, I have been writing resumes and other career marketing documents since 1983. But it was always either a side business while I worked a full time job, parented my sons, or was partnered with non-profit contracts. When I dropped that last contract, I changed my focus to only the career marketing business with a goal of building it and expanding it from a primarily local business to a more globally focused business.

I also hoped to reach some of my financial and personal goals in the process. Non-profit contracts are great but they took all my energy and left no time for me to focus on building my business.

However everything I needed to succeed, I already had. I had great connections to the career community to grow my knowledge base. I had the ability to learn social media strategies and I had access to some of the greatest minds in the world through contacts I met online.

In two years, I have helped many clients throughout the world succeed and my own business, Design Resumes is running 53% ahead of last year and has already exceeded 2010 revenues by 12%. Failing economy, I think not. My business has weathered both good and bad economy and I can tell you that strategies I am using today make the difference. You can decide – are these the worst of times or perhaps these are really the best of times.

Are you blaming the economy?

If you watch the news lately you see all kinds of people blaming the economy for their problems. Here’s the reality, my clients armed with a great accomplishment-driven resume and creative job strategies are finding the jobs of their dreams all the time. For some, it will take longer than others because either they are not exerting as much focus in the search or they have set too many limitations on what that dream position is supposed to look like.

For entrepreneurs, this is the very best time to be in business.

You have more tools than ever in the past to find new customers or clients and to talk to them directly using the tools of social media. You can market both products and services to people throughout the world. In case you are thinking that my success is only because job seekers need the career industry, let’s give you a different example.

My new puppy, Buddy, is sporting a new collar, leash, and quick release harness all made by EzyDog. EzyDog is based in Idaho and isn’t sold in Wisconsin but I learned about the EzyDog line of products from Kimba Green, who I met on Twitter originally. Kimba and I became friends on Twitter and I focused on her job search in this post. We connected on Facebook and that is where I learned that Kimba has two German Shepherds.

When I mentioned my trouble getting Buddy to walk and how much he was pulling on Facebook, Kimba said that she used EzyDog products. I trusted Kimba, partially because I know her and trust her advice and partially because she understands the issues specific to German Shepherds. What happened? EzyDog got a new customer and I never saw an ad or tweet or any communication from them directly. Word-of-mouth led me there.

My point is that you can stop whining about how bad the economy is and get what you need either as a job seeker or as an entrepreneur to make it work. You already have everything you need to succeed!