I have given many presentations on social media and your job search.  Everybody is finally “getting” LinkedIn, but few are looking at Twitter or even Facebook as platforms which could aid those in transition in their job search.  Today I want to talk about one strategy that I discuss on Twitter and your job search, and a story of how one Windmill Networker found success through thinking outside of the box and integrating the people he meets on Twitter with LinkedIn with real-life!

Personal branding is important in your job search to help differentiate yourself from all the other job seekers. But in social media, personal branding is more than just a differentiator: it can help you be perceived as a thought leader and get found by more relevant people sooner.  And Twitter is the perfect platform for this: just by tweeting about interesting reads from your industry that you’re already perusing anyway, you start building up your personal brand and people start to follow you.  Opportunities appear.

Rather than my speaking more about this, I am going to hand the pen over to today’s guest, Ken Nicholas. Ken Nicholas is a dynamic Sales leader and powerful Sales talent, with acclaimed successes in Social Media, Digital & Print. He has been the driving sales force behind leading ad programs that have resulted in winning Print Media Plan of the Year from AdWeek as well as creating a core part of the social media ad program that recently won the “Best in Social Media” Catalyst Award from JD Power & Associates. He writes an Industry blog, MindOnMedia[Sales] that has been linked on the AOL Autos blog family to date. He has also recently consulted with a Top-15 Ad Network and a WebTV/Video trade site, as he continues his look at new opportunities in 2010. Please feel free to reach out to Ken by connecting with him on LinkedIn.

Ken Nicholas

[This Post is dedicated to Neal Schaffer, visionary leader of SoCal Sushi Lunch events & social media expert/author of Windmill Networking.]

Almost by accident recently, I came across [yet] another way to utilize Twitter, one that I personally had not seen or heard of anywhere else until I inadvertently, well, used it. The technique is actually quite simple, can create new Interview/Job Lead oppty’s for each of us, AND demonstrate your expertise in the Career area you are pursuing…all at the same time. Really.

How? Over the holidays, I did a Tweet about a certain topic in the field I am in [and hope to find my next job in], Media Sales. In so doing, a firm that I had never heard of apparently does an ongoing ‘Auto-Search’ for keywords on Twitter that were exactly on the topic I had written about, and a day or so later, they started to Follow me.

Curious [as I had never heard of this firm], I clicked from the Notify email that they were now following me, through to their Website. Obviously, they were following me for a reason [the Tweet on that topic], so why not check them out? I did…and then clicked their ‘Careers’ button.

It turns out, this firm that I had never heard of…that found me from a Tweet that I had done…had a job opening; a Sales spot at the exact level I was looking for.

So, I of course applied. But I wasn’t done. I then went to LinkedIn [here is where I thank Neal Schaffer for his tireless evangelizing], found the C-Level person that I needed to find, sent HIM a note, and told him that I had applied, and they basically would be crazy not to look at me…since they were already following ME on Twitter! The logic works: they can’t question your expertise [they searched by keywords that YOU used], and can’t question your relevance [they are following YOU on Twitter.]

And, in my case on the Sales side, they can’t question my Sales skills, as my effort describes here, including asking the C-Level guy ‘for the order’; in this case, an interview.

Does this work? Well, I created a Job Lead from a company I had never heard of. And I have the first phone interview with them next week. I’ll take it! As I am my own Sales Mgr here, I am adding this to my own sales Career ‘pipeline’.

This is just one more example of how Social Media is & will be used, that could never have been predicted, or really created, in any other way. If you want to find out more about how I did this, get in touch~! Good Luck & Good Selling.

Have you had similar experiences in gaining new job leads from Twitter or social media?  Please do share for all of us to learn from!  Thanks!

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