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Hello, I'm Sherrie Goodman, Career Internship Specialist at the University of North Georgia in Career Services. Today, I'm going to talk to you about social media and how it can affect you as a student and in your professional career search. Why is social media important? Social media is now at the forefront of any job search, even as an internship student, as a professional, or in your college career. So, you want to make sure you're represented very well when it comes to using social media in your future job search. Twenty-eight percent of people with more than one hundred fifty connections has found their last job through social media. Of that twenty-eight percent, seventy-three percent are ages eighteen to thirty-four years old. Ninety-four percent of recruiters use social media to vet candidates. Fifty-five percent use Twitter. Sixty-five percent will check the candidates through Facebook. Eighty-nine percent have hired candidates through LinkedIn. And seventy-eight percent of recruiters have hired through a social media platform. This is a breakdown of the most popular social media networks and how it relates to a job seeker and a recruiter. For Facebook, eight-three percent are seekers, whereas only sixty-five percent are recruiters. If you look at LinkedIn, there are ninety-four percent recruiters using LinkedIn, versus only thirty-six percent of job seekers. This indicates you have a greater opportunity to find employment and connect to a recruiter using LinkedIn versus Facebook. As far as Twitter, fifty-five percent are recruiters and forty percent are job seekers. And Google Plus is a little eighteen percent for recruiters and thirty-three percent for job seekers. LinkedIn is the most popular way and the most beneficial way of using social media to gain access to employers, recruiters, as well as employment. This is like a schematic of showing how you connect across the world using LinkedIn. So, it's called LinkedIn 101. So, I will go over LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter when comes to you as a student, as well as a professional in your job search. How does LinkedIn work, you want to know? LinkedIn is a connection between you and your professional connections in your circle and their circle and in their circle. So, you see we have friends here, but most often you use connections on LinkedIn and friends on Facebook. So, you are in the middle to your first connections and then their connections making your second connections, and their connections making it your third connections. So, as you can see the more connections you have increases your second and third connections. Also, increasing your chances of findings individuals who are in your field and in your profession who you can network with and also look at as far as mentors. So, who uses LinkedIn? There are two hundred and fifty-nine plus million professionals who have a LinkedIn account. Of those sixty-four percent are outside of the U.S.A. There are over three million companies who have a LinkedIn account with over a hundred and fifty thousand industries. There are sixty thousand colleges and university alumni groups. Every executive from a Fortune 500 Company has an account, and there are over thirty million students and alum and recent graduates using LinkedIn for their professional growth. So, how LinkedIn helps? Basically, this is a new status, "It's no longer enough to simply have a solid resume. Students now need a professional online presence" by Holly Paul, U.S. Recruiting Leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers. This is an example of what you can find on Google. This is what implores you to search for you when you're looking at you as a candidate for an internship or for employment. So, you have on the left the individual, Joseph, who is in the middle. This means that he is probably not as active on LinkedIn profile. The more active you are, the more you use this tool it causes your profile to become at the beginning, top of the Google search. So, when employers search for you, you want them to see your LinkedIn profile first versus any other social media platform. To increase the chances of building your online presence you may want to add your LinkedIn to your email signature. Once you create your LinkedIn account you're able to customize your LinkedIn URL to reflect your name, your first name, your last name, and this is what you can use on your resume, professional business cards, as well as in your email signature. So, if individuals are looking you up or looking at your resume, they can go to your LinkedIn profile and see a more extensive, detailed listing of things you've been involved in and how it affects you. As you can see, you have the individual's first name, their position, their phone number and fax, and their email address, and a small statement saying, "Connect with me on LinkedIn." This is a great way to increase the online presence of using your LinkedIn account to build your online presence. Here are a few benefits of using a LinkedIn...of joining a LinkedIn in group. It helps you to enhance your brand. So, it allows individuals to see that you're engaged with this group, you're getting access to the latest tools, and techniques, and trends. So, you're building your online brand and also growing in that field. It allows you to increase communication. This allows you to talk to individuals who are in the field through email and it helps you to build those strong keywords and those terminologies that will help you stand out when going into that profession. It also helps you to connect with alumni and students. This way you can see what other students are engaged in, as far as internships, volunteer experiences, extracurricular activities. So, you can then begin to look at ideas of where you would like to intern, or possibly work in the future. It helps you connect with alumni. So, you can see where students who have left ̨Íåswag, who've graduated in their respective fields, and how you can possibly work with that same company, or kind of follow on their path to see where it will lead you. Here are a few recommended groups that we suggest that you join as a student using LinkedIn for the first time. You'll definitely want to join ̨Íåswag Career Services. In ̨Íåswag Career Services, this is where you can find information about related articles to your professional growth, as well as your job search. You can use this to look at latest trends and techniques that we feel are relevant to you in your search. Also, you have Atlanta Jobseekers. Atlanta Jobseekers is a great site that you can use to see what is going on as far as new employers coming to Atlanta, as well as Georgia. It allows you to see what new companies are coming, when they're coming, what services they're looking for, and what makes you a great fit for this company. Indeed is another way you can use, as far as looking for opportunities online this is a great way to kind of see what employers are posting, what type of positions they're looking for and how you can find out about the positions once they first post to the internet. You also have Hireminds and Professional Affiliations. I strongly encourage you to follow Professional Affiliations. These are organizations like Psychological Association where you can really see what things are trending in that field. Most often, you'll get to see the latest white papers, you'll get to see the latest topics that are relevant, so then you can use those to talk to your professor about, talk to mentors about, and to grow in that field. You can also follow Interest Groups and different organizations. Organizations that may not be in the area. Organizations you really have a strong interest about, and you want to see how they're growing and what they're doing in the community and in the world. So, I'll go over five benefits of having a LinkedIn account for students and alumni. One, you'll build a professional online presence. Two, you'll connect in meaningful ways with alumni and other "warm" contacts. Three, you'll research companies and industries. Four, explore opportunities with organizations that don't recruit on campus. And five, you'll learn professional networking etiquette. So, in order to build your online professional presence, these are pictures you would not want to have on your LinkedIn profile, your Facebook, or any social media platform. These are pictures that indicate that you may just want to have fun, but however it's not something you want to betray out there on a professional level for you when it comes to looking for internships or employment. So, here are the five golden rules students should use when creating a LinkedIn profile. You want to have a professional photo of you alone. Most often you can pay attention to different activities on campus and there may be a photographer on campus taking professional pictures for you, in which you can use on your profile for LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. If not, you can simply take a picture of yourself in professional attire at the top, as well on a blank background, a white background or cream background with a camera, and only use that photos, just your headshot on your LinkedIn or Facebook profile. When it comes to LinkedIn right below your picture and your name you have what's called a headline or a tagline. This is where you can indicate what type of position you're looking for, or industry you're looking to go into, and when are you looking to graduate, or if you've already graduated. So, you can say, "A Marketing student seeking an internship position in the Marketing field." So, you want to make sure your area of study and your career ambitions are in your tagline because most often recruiters will use the tagline to search for individuals in a specific field in specific area. So, if your tagline has strong keywords to that field it increases your chances of being seen by a recruiter looking for opportunities to hire you in a certain geographic setting. In your summary, which is directly below your picture, you want to have a very keyword rich summary. This will include types of positions you're seeking and certain skill sets that you feel are relevant to that field, that will increase your chances of gaining employment, or reaching a recruiter. Unlike a resume, LinkedIn is also a resume, but there are no page limits. So, you want to make sure you include all your volunteer activities, your internships, and also your extracurricular activities. There's no set length so you can go into detail about it is you've done in an internship, what roles you played in your activities, and extracurricular activities. You can also request recommendations from your professors, advisers, and your past internship sites. Not only will you have a hardcopy of a recommendation from a professor, but they can also put that on your LinkedIn profile. So, when employers search for you and view your LinkedIn profile they can see what others are saying about you on a continual basis. Also, you can connect with alumni and other "warm" contacts. You'll want to connect with your professors, staff, and individuals who are affiliated with your college, also individuals who you have worked with in a professional setting, such as an internship, volunteering, or job shadowing. This allows you to connect with them, and then you can take those connections to build future connections. This is what's called your "warm" contacts. You'll also want to connect with alumni. Alumni is a great person you can reach out to who may have graduated in your particular in field who is working in a company that you may admire or want to know more about. This can allow you to talk to that person and say, "I'm a ̨Íåswag graduate as well, and I want to talk to you to see how I can get more involved in this field," or ask them if they may serve as your mentor to help you navigate how to grow professionally in that new career field. One other thing you can use LinkedIn to do is research companies. At the top you have different tabs that allow you to research companies and industries. This can help you determine more about the company that you may not find on their website. So, let's say you're getting ready for an interview, and you look at the company website, but you want to know more about what's going on currently that may not be on the website. LinkedIn is great tool because most companies use this site to put out information about what they're doing currently in the community, what positions they have available. So, this way you can go into the interview more prepared and talk about what's going on with the company as of right now. It also allows you to research specific industries. Industries that are of interest to you. Where are the industries going? Are they moving locations? Is there a certain area where the industry is more popular than others. This can help you, also, in your future job search. Also, you can use LinkedIn to explore opportunities with organizations that do not recruit on campus. Let’s say you're interested in a company that's based in California, but you really want to work there as an intern or either once you graduate. This allows you to put that company's keywords in and the area and then you can then follow that company to see when they post internships, when they're having possibly online career fairs. So, you can state in the loop about that company, so once you're ready to intern and graduate you know where you want to go. This tells you how to use LinkedIn to search by relevance. On the left hand side, you'll see there's Major League Baseball, which is one of the companies they're looking for, and also, it gives you the option to choose a first, second, or a group member. So, once you do that it then gives you a list of individuals who meet those specific criteria that you're looking for then you can see if they're a good person to reach out to for a contact, not only how you can help them, but how they can help you. When reaching out to contacts you want to do so in a professional manner. You do not simply want to send a request not indicating how you know that person or what your interests are in talking to this person. So, as you can see there are five or six different categories in which you can select how do you know this person. So, if you are also connecting with the ̨Íåswag alum you can select classmate. It'll pull up a list of your universities and you can select the one in which you know this person. This is a great statement that you may want to include at the end, "John, I'm a junior at Yale and found your profile in our LinkedIn group. I admire your career in graphic design and hope to pursue a similar path. Would you be willing to connect with me and possibly offer some advice by email or phone? I would greatly appreciate your time. Thank you." This is a very "warm" connection. It allows an individual to see where they possibly know you from and what it is you're looking to gain from that connection. This is before with hire me. This is after. This is a great way to reach out to recruiters. So, you simply send a very blanket statement indicating what interests you have in this company or positions you're applying for. This will offer you opportunity to gain a quicker acceptance with this person now because the person now knows what is you're after when connecting with them LinkedIn. This is a great way for you to learn professional networking etiquette. You want to be mindful of individuals’ time as if you are meeting them face to face. Even if you are sending an email or following up, you want to allow enough time for them to do whatever they need to do as far as following up on a lead or making a connection back to you. Do not overwhelm them with constant emails about positions you're looking to work with, and make sure that you are able to give them enough time to respond. This is a great site I would like for all of you to take note of, it's linkedin.com\studentjobs. This is specifically dedicated to students who are looking for employment. It allows you to specify what type of job function you're looking for in what area. This is a great site to continue to follow because employers use this site very frequently to post positions for students. Most often it has requirements just for students meaning you have to be a recent graduate. So, it's a really good site to look for internships as well as employment. Now, onto Facebook. A lot individuals use Facebook for their personal reasons, also you can use it for your professional reasons. So, I'm going to go over a few things to help you clean up your Facebook. That way if employers find you on the internet, on your Facebook they'll be presented with a very professional setting. The shocking statistics. Thirty-seven percent of employers use social networking to screen potential job candidates. This means once you apply for a position most often they are going to take your name and Google it to see what comes up. The first thing you want to come up, of course, is LinkedIn. However, if you have a Facebook account you want it to be in a professional setting with privacy settings that will not allow them to see things that you would not want to put out there in the public. So, when employers use this as a tool for their candidates forty-three percent have hired a second choice due to what they found on a candidate. What they found was fifty percent, provocative, inappropriate photos, forty-eight percent drug use, thirty-three percent bad mouthing a previous employer, thirty percent of poor communication skills, twenty-eight percent of racial, sexist, or discriminatory religious comments in politics, and twenty-four percent lied about their qualifications. These are things you do not want employers to see when Googling you when you're looking opportunities to either intern or work. So, what can you do? You can stay current on the privacy settings for each social media site. Facebook continuously updates their privacy settings so you want to make sure your privacy settings do not change eliminating the chances for employers to see anything you may not want them to see. Do not allow your search engine to be linked to the timeline. So, whatever you post on your timeline you do not want it to populate onto a search engine that way if employers search your name and certain keywords that are on your timeline it'll bring up your Facebook profile that you may not want them to see. Delete unnecessary apps and games. Make sure your photos and albums are private. Any photo you have that's available to the public you want to make sure is granny approved and is professional and not putting you in a bad light. Restrict tagging. If you are allowing tagging make sure it's something that you can approve before it's publicly displayed. This may affect you if a person or a friend of yours tags you to a comment that you don't know about and that person is searched on Google and your name pops up under that comment that can prevent you from gaining employment. And clean your "Friends" list. Make sure your "Friends" list are appropriate. Some sites allow individuals to search for you based on your "Friends" list. When it comes to Twitter, Twitter is also a very great tool to look for employment. Most often employers will hashtag or give a certain handle about opportunities that they have available currently that they may not have posted to their website or they're giving you a preview of what's to come before it actually goes live. This is a great way to see what positions are available in that time now. So, here are a few things about Twitter. It's okay to have a professional and a personal account. You want to keep it separate. Your professional account you want to make sure it's specifically to your field and your job search. Whereas your personal account you want to make sure that it's very private. When you're following people and companies on Twitter, remember that they can see who you follow. So, if an employer were to find you on Twitter, they can also see what individuals and what companies you follow. So, for your professional account you want to follow individuals and companies who are related to your field, professional growth, and things you find interesting that relate to your growth as well. You want to be active. The more you tweet the more popular and more social presence you gain using Twitter. Also, it's a great way to contact potential mentors using certain hashtags. And here are a list of great hashtags to use when looking for jobs, hashtag job listing, hashtag job opening, hashtagGEjobs, this is related to specifically GE, so they'll post positions with this hashtag. So, once you follow these hashtags you will see when certain positions are posted. Also, there is a great one called hashtag jobhuntchat. It's something that is live every Monday from ten to eleven. The great thing about Twitter is it allows you to engage one-on-one with that Twitter follower, so you can ask questions to that specific company about internships, about positions, and most often you'll get a response in live time. The unwritten rule of social media. You want to be professional. Understand and use your privacy settings, but err on the side of professionalism. As I said, Facebook and LinkedIn privacy settings change quite frequent so you want to make sure that whatever you have out there is professional. Proofread all your posts for spelling, punctuation, grammar, and content. Whenever you're making a comment on LinkedIn, which we encourage you to do so. So, we posted an article in the Career Services group on LinkedIn. We encourage you to comment on the article, give your side of it, what you've experienced, but when you do make those posts make sure the spelling, punctuation, and grammar, and content is appropriate because it can be seen by others who view this site as well. Be consistent in your social media presence. You want to make sure that you're constantly using it and you're not using it for a certain period of time and then no longer using it because it no longer becomes relevant. Be positive. Make your comments constructive. Do not post negative things on Facebook or social... any social media platform because it could be seen by others. Be active and engaged in all social media platforms you join, quality versus quantity. There's no good to have five different social media outlets that you use, but you use neither of them actively. If you only have two and you use them more frequently it builds your online presence in a positive way. Follow specific rules of each social media network that you use. Be respectful of people's time, and be willing to help others. Not only what can you gain from working with this individual and making this connection, what can you give them. Some employers are looking at reaching out to you as a young growing professional because you may have ideas and techniques and tools that can help them do better in the field as well. Thank you. I'm Sherrie, University of North Georgia in Career Services.