Welcome to the Escape Blog

Being new to the Wildfire team, what better topic for my first blog post could there be than writing about the Web 2.0 tools I used in my search for a job?

The job market has become very competitive and if used to your advantage, social media networks can give you a head start over the competition.

I thought that I’d start with the four steps I went through, and then an overview of the social networks that worked for me. If you have any other suggestions, please drop me a comment below.

First step: Google yourself

Search out your name and your email address. Take stock of your web presence. After reading your CV, a prospective employer may try to see what else they can find out you from a search engine. Beat them to it, so you can control what aspects of your life they have access to.

Step two: Take back control of your online portfolio

Remember that old LiveJournal account? You don’t want your future boss reading about the trouble you and your mates got up to when you were sixteen. Purge it.

You don’t want them seeing the Facebook photos from that holiday in Spain either. Change your privacy settings.

Keep the profiles and communities that you think will suit your job search, and future career, best. The rest should be locked down.

Third step: Personal branding

Let people know who you are, what you do, what you can do and what you are looking for. The personal bio section of your Twitter account or the about me section of your blog is a great place to briefly showcase yourself to a potential employer.

Step four: Make connections

Learn, meet and share. Add or follow people in your desired field, and don’t bombard your connections with requests for a job. Learn from them. Share with them.

If your CV says you are an expert in something, now is the time to prove it. The more you network, the more likely a job opportunity is to present itself.

Also, be aware: they say that a job interview starts the second you meet the receptionist. On sites like Twitter, it can start much sooner. Keep your interactions positive.

Here are the social media networks that helped me the most:

Twitter:

Twitter has been my favourite tool in searching for a job.

More and more recruiters are using it to advertise vacancies and find candidates and it gives you the opportunity to be the first to apply.

It can give you direct access to hiring managers and HR departments and is a great tool for getting your foot in the door.

It is also a powerful tool for research. Finding employment is as much about finding a job that suits your skills as it is about finding a workplace the suits your personality. Twitter can give you access to learn what it is like in a day in the life of an employee in a company.

If you are connecting with potential employers and coworkers, remember to keep your Tweets positive so you don’t end up throwing any job opportunities away.

Facebook:

Facebook is a more personal network, and might be best kept between good friends, but it shouldn’t be discounted as a tool for your job search. Talk to your former classmates, and your old work buddies. Let them know that you are looking for work. You never know what opportunities will arise.

LinkedIn:

LinkedIn is like your CV 2.0. Use it to highlight your past experiences. Complete your profile, connect with people you know, ask for recommendations and make it searchable.

The ‘who has viewed my profile’ module was my favourite little pick-me-up during my job search. It is always a great boost to your confidence when you see that “someone in a leadership function in the Public Relations and Communications industry from London” has checked out your profile recently.

Also, by joining the LinkedIn groups in your field can keep you up to date with new developments while you’ve been unemployed.

Have you used social media in your job search? What has worked for you?

photo credit

UK mega-blog-network-wannabe Shiny Media has been forced into administration. The company, best know for its Shiny Shiny and Tech Digest gadget blogs, shelved 17 jobs back in February (as reported on this very blog) but it seems that was not enough to save it from going under.

paidContent:UK cites a memo from co-founder Chris Price, sent to freelancers, stating:

“The truth is that trading was extremely difficult and the position of the bank with regards to renewing the overdraft were very unfavourable.”

As reported by paidContent:UK, there are perhaps some plans afoot to attempt to save the ailing network and some of its more popular blogs, but the question remains: does an advertising funded, blogging, publishing model really work here in the UK?

For those in the PR industry, it is yet another sign of the changing times. Old media is undergoing perhaps the biggest change it has seen since the invention of the printing press and even new media – as typified by Shiny – is finding it hard work. With the democratisation of online media, the competition for eyeballs is just too great and businesses are looking for ways to make their advertising pounds work harder and more strategically.

We’ll have to wait and see what happens at Shiny, but what we do know is that the audience is still out there, even if the way we reach them is rapidly changing.

Last year a presentation entitled by self-proclaimed marketing guru Marta Kagan took the industry by storm.

Well, it’s a year on and much has changed. So Kagan has updated the presentation. It’s still as wonderfully observational as before!

We all know that newspaper organisations are generally in a bad state at the moment, especially in print form. It seems that the business model required to keep professional journalism alive is still yet to be fully realised.

But whilst (apart from The Independent) we are unlikely to see any big name casualties in the near future (although the Guardian Tech Supplement is likely to be given the chop soon…), the local news situation is far more perilous.

And, according to Ben LaMothe, writing on Econsultancy, newspaper website design has much to answer for:

“For years if a newspaper had a website, it most likely served as a digital dumping ground for the print product. Design and functionality wasn’t a key concern because most readers still got their news in print. Times have changed, but unfortunately many newspapers remain unprepared.”

Ben cites an example from the US (where the situation is widely acknowledged to be a bit further down the path to destruction than over here) where a new breed of ‘local website’ – in this case AnnArbor.com – is successfully filling a hole vacated by the traditional media outlets (in this case it is actually owned by the publishers of the now defunct print title). It’s great to see the owners actively engaging with the local community to try and establish exactly what form the website should take and what content should be made available.

And so it was with great interest that I noticed a new website spring up this week covering a city where I grew up for about ten years. Bristol’s Evening Post newspaper hasn’t folded yet, but everytime I go back it seems to get thinner and thinner. Bristol 24-7 aims to provide the local residents with an alternative. It’ll be good to see how the site develops and whether it manages to differentiate itself sufficiently from the more established news outlet.

Because let’s face it and as Ben suggests in his post, newspaper companies aren’t necessarily the ones that are best placed to survive in this new digital world.

UPDATE: Scoble has posted an interesting update here: http://scobleizer.com/2009/06/30/blogging-is-back/