By Justine Féron
The days of circling ads in local newspapers are over.
Even online job databases are passé.
Today’s savvy job hunters aren’t perusing classifieds or scrolling through hundreds of help wanted ads – they are on social networking sites. As a result, Centretown job hopefuls who cannot navigate the online world of connections and recommendations may soon be missing out on employment opportunities.
Ever since MySpace sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. for $580 million in 2005 and reports began swirling that Facebook is worth $10 billion, social networking has been one of the media’s biggest buzzwords. Members use these sites to post photographs, to communicate with friends and, increasingly, to find jobs.
In January, Ottawa resident Rob Butler founded a Facebook group simply titled ‘Jobs in Ottawa’ in an effort to help his friends find work and in the hopes of furthering his own employment search.
Today, the group has more than 700 members who exchange job hunting tips and commiserate about the difficulty of finding work in Ottawa.
“The Ottawa market is tough, so you have to think creatively about how to sell yourself,” Butler says. “For some industries, it can really pay off if you know how to navigate Facebook and use it to get the right contacts.”
But Facebook is hardly the only online venue for job networking. Professional sites that have much in common with social networking behemoths like Facebook and MySpace are also growing in popularity.
With 14 million members from 150 industries, LinkedIn is perhaps the Internet’s largest professional networking site. It works according to a “six degrees of separation” principle – when you connect with other LinkedIn members, you gain access to all their connections, their connections’ connections, and so on. Successful job searches are built on recommendations of candidates that are forwarded from one member to others.
Adobe currently uses LinkedIn to recruit for consulting and technical support positions at its Preston Street location. Ottawa-based Ambercore Software and MXI Technologies are looking for their company’s next sales director and solutions architect on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn and Facebook are about to be joined by a Canadian competitor. On Jan. 1., Queen’s University law student Jonathan Kleiman will launch Probook.ca, a networking site dedicated to helping job hopefuls market themselves .
Probook has created considerable buzz by running promotional ads on Facebook and by distributing its own television commercial, featuring a young man so desperate to make a living that he covertly deflates car tires so that he can offer his services as an on-site mechanic to distraught drivers. The tagline asks, “Need a better way to market yourself?”
For job seekers who do, sites like LinkedIn seem to offer hope – the chance to bypass long lists of uninteresting jobs and get into direct contact with the people doing the hiring.
“That’s the great thing about using the networking sites,” says Butler. “You actually get a name, not just the useless general contact e-mail at the corporate site.”
But all may not be lost for the technologically-challenged, so long as they are willing to boldly pursue the jobs they want.
“My friend once sent flowers up to a CEO’s office, attaching her resumé so it would go straight to the top,” Butler says. “She got the interview, got the marketing job, and now she works for Formula One.”