Posted under Job Search & Networking & Social Networking
Is using a social networking site during your job search really networking?
Not according to this post from The Pongo Blog.
Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and others are great tools to help you keep in touch with your friends and get introduced to new contacts, but they don’t substitute for face-to-face and over-the-phone networking.
Sorry, introverts!
I agree with the post that it’s easy to believe that we as job seekers are networking when we are merely engaging in brief interactions with strangers. It may be fun, it may be amusing, and we may be meeting all kinds of interesting people, but these people are not the ones who are going to think of us and contact us when they hear about a job.
Cultivating and maintaining a network of people who are going to rely on one another for important things, like referring job leads, still requires personal contact. We build trust with people after we’ve seen their faces and/or heard their voices.
If you found out about a great job opening in a different field from yours, wouldn’t you think of the people you know personally before moving on to the people you’ve met online?
Social networking sites are great places to find out about restaurants, what your friends are up to, what’s happening at a certain company, and who might be hiring. They can be excellent tools to help you secure an introduction to someone you’d like to meet.
But the way to effectively work your network as a job seeker remains decidedly low-tech.
Am I just a GenX fuddy-duddy on this issue, or what? Please let me know your thoughts.
Posted by Heather Mundell


