SACRAMENTO - The competition in today's job market is the toughest it has been in decades. With that in mind, millions of unemployed Americans are utilizing online resources in efforts to stand out and grab the attention of employers.
But there are pros and cons to online employment resources.
One of the better networking resources in terms of job hunting is LinkedIn. The website is geared towards helping searchers establish contacts in their desired field. Instead of making blind cold calls to employers, individuals can use LinkedIn to communicate with company representatives, which may improve one's chances of getting a response.
Terri Carpenter, Public Information Officer with Sacramento Works, highly recommends LinkedIn. "It allows you the ability to send them, if you have any job openings, here is my background, here is my resume," she says. "So you can, connect with professionals in the LinkedIn manner."
Carpenter offered five tips to help online job seekers in their search for employment:
- Change up your resume each time you apply for a job in a different field. For example, if you are applying for a job in technology and another in healthcare, you need to make sure your skills are listed differently to match those fields.
- If your resume is on an online site and it's not getting any hits after about 45 days, take it off that site and move it to another.
- Repost your resume every 14 days, otherwise it falls to the bottom of the database.
- Maximize your resources. Don't be afraid to call on friends, friends of friends, or friends of friends of friends.
- Remember that anything you post, or anything posted about you online, can always be traced back to you. That's why you need to be extremely cautious about what you post online. Perform a thorough check of your social networking accounts, including Myspace and Facebook. Remove any compromising posts or pictures of drugs, alcohol, profanity, or other content an employer might consider inappropriate.
Many people think they are completely protected by setting their pages to private. But professional photographer, Jason Dowd, of Tampa, Florida, points out that many people have hundreds, if not thousands of friends on their Facebook pages. There is always a chance that some of those friends may be connected to a potential employer.
"You also don't want to take pictures of yourselves constantly partying," he says. "I mean there's people out there who are slop-drunk, they have a glass of beer or wine in their hands and they just look ridiculous."
A question posted on the News10 Facebook page asked viewers if they had ever gotten in trouble at work for something they posted online.
Asi Sanchez wrote: "I got written up for posting on my Facebook that I didn't like my new store and I wanted to transfer back to my old store. And on my write-up they punished me even more by taking away my option to transfer for one year."
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