Cast a Wide Net for Job Search Success

By Joshua Waldman from Job Searching with Social Media For Dummies

The more online profiles you have, the better your chances are of getting found by the right hiring manager. LinkedIn is the highest-leverage tool for any professional at any stage in his or her career. However, LinkedIn doesn’t hold a monopoly on professional networking, and other sites have emerged as key players.

Think of using online profiles like casting a net to catch fish. You want to facilitate the possibility of a recruiter finding you and reaching out to you. Although you can’t control who finds you, every profile you create increases your chances, the same way casting a net rather than using a line ups your odds of catching multiple fish.

The question is, with so many networks to manage, won’t you just be wasting your time? Although that’s a possible risk, following these tips can help make managing multiple networks much easier:

Establish a weekly routine or checklist with each of your networks and visit them at least once per week. Using a checklist for your weekly routine is a great tool because you don’t have to rethink about the same things each week.
Use the same username/password combination on every network. Doing so lowers the physiological barrier to using them. If the annoyance of having to remember a password is the first experience you have with a website, chances are you won’t go there much.

Change your password every six months. Although the chance that someone will hack into a social networking site and steal data from the actual network itself is always present, updating your password twice a year can be useful in helping you avoid these hackers.

If you happen to use any kind of Google service (such as Gmail or Picasa), then you have an easy way of consolidating all the various social networks you participate in, thanks to your Google Profile (which you already have because you use a Google application — if you don’t have a Google account yet, setting one up is easy and free).

Think of your Google Profile as the way Google displays information about you online. (Don’t worry: Your profile doesn’t display any private information unless you explicitly tell it to.) You can use your Google Profile as a holding account for all the networks you’re active in by simply adding links to each of your social networks, which can help you keep track of where you have profiles.

Follow these steps to claim and customize your Google Profile:

Visit Google.com/profiles and click on the Sign In link on the top-right corner to see your profile link.

Remember that if you already use any type of Google application, you shouldn’t have to create a Google Profile from scratch.
Upload a photo.

Use the same one from your LinkedIn Profile.
Copy in your value statement in the Introduction area.
Add links to sites containing more information about you, such as your LinkedIn profile and website.