From Facebook to Resume: Marketing Yourself Via Social Networks

By Jenn Hernandez, Berglund Student Fellow

The rise of social networking sites has brought about many creative outlets for marketing yourself, sharing your ideas, and posting your photos. In the grips of a struggling economy, the focus is on multimedia resumes as a very helpful and highly visible method to get a leg up on the job market and start networking—building a positive and professional presence online. As Dan Schawbel, author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, states, 80% of jobs are filled via social networking. [1] Are you taking advantage of this trend?

One way to get noticed is to use a social resume site, many of which allow multimedia like video, music samples, and photos to accompany the traditional resume. Multimedia resume sites are like a directed blog solely for the purpose of highlighting your experience. They can be viewed by employers (sometimes for a fee, sometimes for free) and commented on by others in the community. There are many sites out there with references to social resumes, but the one I found most helpful and descriptive was a list of ten on mashable.com [2] This gave me a good place to start looking for a resume site that worked best with how I want to portray my professional self via the Internet.

In an economy like today’s you can never be too careful with the image you project to possible employers because once they have an impression of you, it’s hard to let it go. The first impression obtained by prospective employers may not be the one you’d want to be retained. So what can you do? The answer is surprisingly simple: don’t post anything you wouldn’t want to be viewed by anyone and everyone; adjust privacy settings, if available (but keep in mind that nothing posted online is truly private); be smart with what you post. One blogger for the Huffington Post explains that by blogging regularly, one can increase their hits on Google searches. [3] By doing so, Google puts current posts and articles at the forefront of searches, which are what perhaps best exemplifies interests and achievements more casually and unconstrained than the traditional resume fashion.

Another word of advice: read the Terms of Service carefully, because, you may (or may not) recall Facebook’s most recent TOS scandal. Sites make updates to their TOS, some of which may revoke your rights to any information you post, a big deal on such an open forum as the Internet. In last month’s issue of Interface [4], The DuBoff Law Group wrote that, “a recent ruling by the superior Court of Fresno County cautions users about the lack of privacy inherent in the use of such sites [as MySpace [5], Facebook [6], Twitter [7], and LinkedIn [8]].” [9] Surely, you’ve heard cautionary tales concerning the use of social networking sites and incriminating photos or comments. The posting of inappropriate content not only makes you look bad, but it can taint the image of the site you are posting to. As a result, Facebook has a team that sifts through reported content for inappropriateness. David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect, resounds that, "If [Facebook] got polluted as just a place for wild and crazy kids, that would destroy the ability to achieve the ultimate vision, which is to create a service for literally everyone." [10]

Just think about it. Not just your friends, but your professors use Facebook and other social networking sites, your parents, and who’s to say that your employers don’t as well? Facebook and other social networking sites have become a place for everyone, so treat it that way. Do you want thousands of people to see your information? So, while social networking can be especially beneficial to job searching, it can also be a handicap, but this really depends on how you choose to use it.

Note: One online resume service I tried was Visual CV [11], which allows users to create an online resume including video and sound files, and other media onto one webpage. Working in the Berglund Center for Internet Studies [12] has made an impression on me as to the importance of using diverse multimedia and networking with others around me or in my field. I look forward to seeing what turns up from my social resume.