You need to be on more than one platform

SOME years ago, I was chatting with a good friend of mine, Jane. She has been looking for a job for many months. Jane had previously been holding a senior role in a well-known global company. Frequent travel, late hours, looming deadlines and endless meetings collided with an ever-increasing workload. It did not bode well for her plans to start a family. After some time mulling over her options, she decided to do what many women, faced with her choices, would do. She opted out for an undefined period of time as she embraced other pressing priorities in her life.

Fast forward three years, and a two-year-old happily in tow, Jane thought it would be a good time to get back into the workforce. She had maintained her Linkedin profile for job hunting purposes but had not done much else. When we reconnected, I asked her whether she had a personal website up or anything else, as part of her job search efforts. She replied, “What would you put on a personal website that you don’t already have on LinkedIn?”

This is what I’d like to address here.

LinkedIn is the go-to choice for many for professional networking purposes and job-hunting naturally. But it is certainly not enough to put all your eggs in one basket. As looking for a job can become a full-time job in itself, your efforts are best supported by ensuring that all appropriate platforms are utilised whenever possible. You must use whatever means you can and make it easy for others to find you. This means being visible wherever others are.

People have differing appreciation for the range of social media platforms now available. Your task, when looking for a new job, is to ensure that your digital profile is reflective of you and as authentic as possible.

What you need to keep in mind is that people are looking for, accessing and making sense of information they come across. You cannot control what they see since not everything about you is published by you. There are times others may publish things about you ie publish comments, documents or photos without your knowledge or permission. Therefore, you want to ensure that you have an awareness of these things. Rightly or wrongly, impressions are created all the time, based on information made available.

So, given these options, what should you do? You should be clear about the presence you develop digitally and you should do the three things below.

Hold your résumé in an online résumé bank

A resume bank or job board is a website that allows you to edit, manage and publish your resume digitally. It is convenient because changes are captured in real time. Since the document sits online, you merely point others to the document. It saves you the bother of having to resend your résumé out to all the people you’re contacting each time you make any update to the document.

Most online résumé banks also take a lot of the formatting and presentation angst out of the equation, leaving you to focus on just inputting relevant information. This makes the whole process a lot quicker. There are many free résumé banks or cv creators online. One I have tried personally is Visual CV, which also allows you to download a pdf version to keep as well. They have a free and paid version available.

Develop a personal website to manage your digital brand

As with many things, you should not build a presence on only one platform and rely on it exclusively.

Take LinkedIn, for example. This is a third party platform which means that you are investing time and effort in something you do not control completely. As building a profile and network takes time, you don’t want your efforts to be wasted if the rules change.

There are websites that help you develop a simple one page presence digitally such as Strikingly or Wix. It is a limited range of services but it is enough to get by. However, if you invest in purchasing your own domain, then you could have your own dedicated space online.

Does it make a difference whether you go with a free or paid service? That depends on whether you are an employee or developing your own business. Many who work for organisations invest in their own domains because they see the value of having their own brand and making it strong and distinct. But where I see this as an imperative is where you’re launching your own business, whether you’re a solopreneur, partnership or more, regardless of the stage you’re at. If you are running a business and have a brand you’re developing, investing in all the peripherals that help to make this happen in a clear, consistent and strong way is the best way forward.

Pick at least one social media platform to be on

Each social media platform is unique, however, and it requires time and persistence to learn to utilise each platform to your advantage, whether it be to support your job hunting efforts or in your work. Whether you use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram, each platform brings a huge potential audience with it, running into the millions. Your choice of platform will depend on your unique business needs and the audience you’re looking to build.