The social web is evolving with each passing day. Right from the day Google+ (a social network introduced by Google) was announced, people have been flocking to join in. Google Plus social network offers some really cool features, apart from bolstering user security. Not only businesses, even jobseekers can use this social network for job search.…
Category: Timebound
Categories
Top 15 Most Popular Blog Posts of 2011
In case you missed any of thse most popular posts on Undercover Recruiter, here they are for your reading enjoyment. Just like last year, the most popular topics are by far social networking, personal branding and interviewing. Our readers also like infographics which you will see featured in the list a few times. A huge…
50 years ago, your resume was pretty hard to send. If you we vying for a job that was out of your city or state, your resume required a stamp and any follow-up was an expensive long-distance phone call.
Today, your resume can be sent in a dozen different directions with the click of the mouse. Social media and email don’t know the difference between three miles and three thousand, so your opportunities as a job seeker are essentially limitless.
While this is great for job seekers across the planet, there are certain things that push them apart from their local competition. Check out three tips to keep in mind when sending your resume to another state (or country!):
Address it early
Put yourself in an employer’s shoes. If you need someone immediately and found a great candidate, wouldn’t you be irritated if they wait to drop the bomb that they’re a six-hour flight away?
In your cover letter and resume, address the fact that you’re a long-distance applicant. Since you already (or should) mention your career goals, bring up your location goals as well. Start the relocation discussion now with how quickly you’d be willing to interview or relocate for this position.
Connect it
As a long-distance applicant, you might feel like you’re at a distinct disadvantage. Employers can think this too, if you let it happen. In your cover letter and resume, connect your experience in a different town to the benefits this company can reap. After all, you are bringing in a new perspective and potentially new clients with you!
Think about the cost
Moving is expensive, not to mention stressful. Before you jet your resume off to the other side of the country, seriously consider what it will cost. If you have a family, this is even harder because you’ll need to uproot your spouse and/or children.
Additionally, do your research on the cost of living in this new area. The job might be paying more, but if rent is double what you’re used to, it might not be enough.
What do you think? Are you planning to work in a new city or state? Have you in the past? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
More on resumes at 10 Signs Your Resume Needs Updating.
Gerrit Hall is the CEO and co-founder of RezScore, a free web application that reads, analyzes, and grades resumes – instantly. Gerrit has successfully combined his passion for computer science and the careers space by helping job seekers write the best resume possible. You can connect with Gerrit and RezScore on Twitter.
Know any jobseekers out there? Are they struggling on social media? Then look no further than Joshua Waldman’s new book “Job Searching with Social Media for Dummies“. I had a chat with Joshua the other day to get some pearls of wisdom for jobseekers out there. In this interview we discuss how important Personal Branding…
Targeted messaging for personal branding in social media can be tricky. The types of messaging that are appropriate for Facebook may not be right for LinkedIn. A one size fits all approach to personal branding may not be the right tactic when you have multiple social media platforms which each have a different audience profile. You don’t want to use the same kind of messaging for casual acquaintance networking as you do for professional networking and job search networking.
And to further muddy the networking waters, what do you do when you have a significant social media overlap? You may have professional contacts and former professors who are also Facebook friends. When you add casual acquaintances and family members into the mix, personal brand messaging can become unnecessarily complicated.
It can become far too easy to lose track of the fact that you’ve got professional contacts included among Facebook friends. Breezy status updates which may be perfectly compatible with personal brand messaging for more intimate acquaintances may be entirely inappropriate for consumption by professional colleagues or academic peers. And LinkedIn status updates which should be focusing on a more serious manner of reflecting your personal brand should normally never be used in the casual relaxed way that can be entirely appropriate for much of your Facebook audience.
Google+ may prove to be a personal branding tool that could avoid these mixed audience pitfalls. Instead of using multiple social media sites, Google+ offers the potential of using just one platform for crafting tailored messaging to distinctly different audiences. Google+ has a series of ingenious circles in which you can place contacts according to the type of relationship you have with each individual.
All of your professional contacts can be placed in one circle making it easy to target specific messaging appropriate for professional networking. A more relaxed approach to personal branding through less formal messaging can be accomplished by addressing friends and acquaintances with the appropriate forms of communication based on the specific kinds of relationships you have with them. And the ability to build distinct circles based on relationship type is infinite.
One possible advantage of a single social media platform approach is that none of your contacts will know which circle they’re in. If a Google+ contact has you in their acquaintance circle, but you’ve placed them in the less intimate professional networking circle, they have no way of knowing. Google+ also allows room for a lot more nuance in social media interactions. If managing your messaging is most easily accomplished by keeping individuals in one circle only, that’s fine.
But if you want to incorporate a bit more nuance into the mix after noodling about on Google+ for a while, you can do that too. You may have situations where someone is a work colleague as well as a close personal friend. You can have them in your professional networking circle as well as in your friend circle. Many professional contacts may not be friends, but it may be entirely appropriate to include them in an acquaintance circle.
Google+ certainly has the potential to be an extremely effective personal branding tool going forward. But whether its potential can be realized is uncertain. Google has a track record of producing excellent services which are sometimes not big hits with the public. Among some of the more memorable Google offerings which never lived up to their potential are Google Buzz and Wave. No matter how great the potential of Google+, if people don’t recognize how great the platform is and flock to it in great numbers, it could result in another well-conceived and brilliant product that never reaches its true potential.
For more tips, check out 10 Personal Branding Ideas for Google Plus.
Jesse Langley lives near Chicago. He divides his time among work, writing and family life. He writes on behalf of Colorado Technical University and has a keen interest in blogging and social media. He also writes for professionalintern.com.