FoundValue Blog

My Social Media Guide to Finding a Job

Dachary Carey — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 18:05:47 +0000

Social media: it’s the new watchword of the 21^st century. People use their Twitter and Facebook accounts to share everything from what they had for dinner to how upset they are about their latest personal issues. Surely you can’t use social media platforms to find a job, right?

Wrong.

The articles, tips and tricks I’m about to share with you come from my personal experience using Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to make the right connections and find work. At first, my experiences – especially with Twitter and Facebook – were almost accidental. I’d have a friend of a friend send me a note about some work because they heard that I was a writer. I quickly realized that I should capitalize on these social networks of mine to intentionally reach out to people and open myself up to new work opportunities. Below I tell you how I made social media work for me.

13 Best Resources for Freelance Jobs

5 Ways to Connect Through Facebook to Find Your Next Job

How to Use Twitter for Job Hunting

4 Easy Ways to Use LinkedIn to Find a Job

Freelance Forums That Can Help Get A Job

We’ve all heard the saying: “It’s not what you know, but who you know.” That’s very applicable to job searching, as employment studies have shown that 26% of all new hires are referrals from within a company. That means that one out of every four employees are hired because they knew someone in the right company.

Think about how many people you know. Do you have 140 Facebook friends? 80 Twitter followers? 60 LinkedIn connections? That’s 280 people you know via social networking, who could potentially hook you up with jobs in one of 280 companies.

Job hunting through social media is a numbers game, and it works. It’s worked for me, and I expect it to continue to bring me job leads. Are you ready to capitalize on your connections to find jobs?

13 Best Resources for Freelance Jobs

Dachary Carey — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:51:38 +0000

If you’re looking for freelance work, plenty of sites exist on the Web to provide you with potential jobs. However, finding freelance work is a numbers game, and you’ll get the most benefit from focusing on the most popular sites, where there are plenty of jobs to consider. While hundreds of freelance job sites exist, these are the most popular, and where you should concentrate your efforts:

Job Bidding Sites

Job bidding sites are designed to enable people who need a freelancer for a project to connect with freelancers who can provide the work. Job bidding sites enable employers to post projects, and freelancers to place bids. The employer then chooses the most suitable proposal.

Elance

Elance is one of the most popular job bidding sites, with 30,000 jobs posted per month, and over 100,000 providers available for work.

Guru

Guru is Elance’s closest competitor, with thousands of jobs posted each month, and many providers in a range of categories. Both clients and providers cross-post projects and profiles between Elance and Guru, so keep an eye out for duplicate listings.

Freelancer

Freelancer, formerly GetaFreelancer.com, is another competitive job bidding site with a broad selection of jobs. It’s probably the closest competitor to Elance and Guru.

AllFreelanceWork

AllFreelanceWork is a freelance job board and community. AllFreelanceWork contains job postings, freelance job aggregators, links to articles and community resources.

Contracted Work

Contracted work is a professional services bidding site, which enables clients to connect with professionals to complete their projects.

Job Aggregating Web Sites

Job aggregating Web sites pull job listings from around the Web. Many of these jobs are full-time jobs, but some are freelance contract jobs.

Freelance Job Search

Freelance Job Search is an aggregate site, but it aggregates specifically from freelance sites – not all job listing sites. This means that the only jobs on Freelance Job Search are freelance jobs aggregated from other sites; there are no full-time jobs mixed in with the results.

Joblighted

Joblighted is a job aggregator that gathers listings from other sites. Joblighted has tracked nearly 50,000 jobs.

Job Pile

Job Pile is another job aggregator that gathers job postings from around the Web. Job Pile typically discovers dozens of new sites every day.

Most Hired

Most Hired is also a job aggregator that lists a few dozen jobs per day.

Indeed

Indeed is a job search engine that lists roughly a million jobs per week.

Job Boards and Listing Sites

While job boards are traditionally the realm of full-time jobs, some job boards also include listings for freelance gigs.

SoloGig.com

SoloGig.com is, in part, a hybrid site. SoloGig includes some freelance and consulting jobs, but also some full-time job listings. Professionals must ‘apply’ for jobs on SoloGigs as with a traditional job board.

GoFreelance

GoFreelance is another hybrid site, where clients can post their jobs and freelancers must ‘apply’ for the job.

Authentic Jobs

Authentic Jobs is small, but growing. It contains a combination of full-time jobs and freelance jobs.

4 Easy Ways to Use LinkedIn to Find A Job

Dachary Carey — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:44:47 +0000

LinkedIn isn’t just the Who’s Who in the employment world. These days, LinkedIn provides a valuable tool for job seekers who are looking for new employment opportunities. Don’t think you can find a job via LinkedIn? I’ve personally made contact with freelance clients when I wasn’t even searching. A good LinkedIn profile can work for you even when you’re not working.

#1. Make Your LinkedIn Profile Shine!

One of the most important keys to successfully using LinkedIn to find a new job is to make sure your profile is fully completed and up-to-date. The more companies, schools and information you provide, the more likely potential employers are to contact you about an opening. Don’t forget to inject a bit of personality to really showcase who you are and why people should hire you. Guy Kawasaki has a great “LinkedIn Profile Extreme Makeover” tutorial.

#2. Use Applications to Make Your Profile Stand Out

LinkedIn enables you to add applications to your profile to showcase your skills and expertise, so customize your profiles with applications that reflect your experience and personality. You can upload presentations, link to your blog, link to a Twitter account, create an Amazon reading list; anything you can do to enhance your profile and give people more information in a fun and interactive way is going to increase your chances of landing a job. Use applications to create a presentation showcasing your skills, or create a visual resume to help you stand out from other potential applicants.

#3. Make Connections to Expand Your Network

Finding a job on LinkedIn is a numbers game. The more people you’re connected to, the easier it is for potential employers to find you via friends and colleagues. Expand your professional network. Use your LinkedIn status to let your colleagues know you’re looking for a job. Join groups. Answer questions to establish your knowledge and skill level. The more exposure you have via LinkedIn, the more your name will show up in searches, and the more likely people are to find you via a friend of a friend, a company, experience or other LinkedIn criteria.

#4. Get Recommendations from Your Colleagues

Recommendations are an extremely valuable feature of LinkedIn. Recommendations enable potential employers to quickly find out what your former colleagues have to say about you, and help determine whether you’re a good fit for a job. Recommendations are also another way for you to connect with people and expand your network. Get as many recommendations as you can, and don’t be afraid to ask for them.

You Can Find a Job via LinkedIn

Don’t assume that finding a job via LinkedIn isn’t for you. With over 250,000 business professionals on LinkedIn, and a ton of companies, many job opportunities exist. Creating an up-to-date, interactive profile is a great start, and enables people to find you and consider you for open positions. You can also use the “Jobs” function to find job openings that match your skills and qualifications. For inside intel, view the profiles of other people employed in the company to see what skills and qualifications the company likes. LinkedIn will work for you once you set up a good profile, but if you’re willing to sleuth via LinkedIn, you can get a lot of great information that can give you an edge over your competitors!

How To Use Twitter For Job Hunting

Dachary Carey — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:40:15 +0000

Twitter is one of the fastest-growing social networking sites, and it might be your key to finding a new job ASAP. Job hunting 140-characters at a time presents unique challenges, so make sure your Twitter account is ready before you begin your Twitter job hunt.

Maintain an Online Presence

If you’re looking for a job, Twitter provides ways to make contact with employers, but Twitter’s short 140-character format doesn’t give you room to tell employers about yourself. If you want to find work using Twitter, you’ll need to maintain an online presence to tell employers about your experience, and to serve as a resume. You can set up a simple website with a resume, or even a blog containing information about your background and experience. Provide a link to your online presence in your Twitter profile. Mashable has a great article on How To: Build the Ultimate Social Media Resume.

Make Your Connections Work for You

One of the biggest benefits of using social networking to find a job is to make your connections work for you. Tweet to your followers that you’re looking for work. Ask them to pass your info on to employers who might be interested in your services. Get your name out to as many people as possible in order to find your new job.

Use “Job Search” Tweets

Several Twitter accounts and hashtags exist exclusively for job searching. @microjobs is a Twitter account where employers can Tweet open positions, and microjobs retweets the information to followers. Hashtag #tweetmyjobs is another Twitter job-posting destination, which enables Twitter users to see all Tweets containing that hashtag. #careers, #jobs, and #job are other popular Twitter job-search hashtags. Check often to see new jobs.

While you’re at it, take a look at the people Tweeting about jobs. If you see recruiters, headhunters or employers with multiple openings, you might want to check them out to see if they have any other qualified jobs.

Make your Twitter Account “Employer Friendly”

Many people use Twitter to share personal status updates that have nothing to do with their work, job experience or professional life. If you’re planning to use Twitter to find a job, make your Twitter account “employer friendly.” Use a professional-looking avatar – not a picture of you drunk on St. Patrick’s Day. Delete references to non-work activities that might offend or put off employers. Avoid Tweeting things that don’t refer to your job search or professional life; at least for the duration of your hunt. Also, make your 160-character ‘bio’ on Twitter a very short elevator pitch of your skills, expertise or job search information.

Twitter Job Hunting is a Give and Take

Job hunting via Twitter isn’t all about what people can do for you. Ultimately, it’s the connections that count, but being a good member of the community can get you more than a take-take-take attitude. If you’re helpful and interact with people, you can grow your network. If you’re constantly self-promoting, people will be much less inclined to follow you, and you’ll actually hurt your chances of finding a job. Remember to keep your Tweets professional, even when interacting with friends. You never know when a potential employer might find you and pass you by.

5 Ways To Connect Through Facebook to Find Your Next Job

Dachary Carey — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:34:17 +0000

Finding a job is, in large part, all about connections. With more than 400 million active users, Facebook is a big player in the numbers game. Depending on your preferences and style, there are a few ways in which you can use Facebook to find your next job.

#1. Shout Out to Your Network

Successfully using Facebook to find a new job is, in large part, a function of reaching out to your Facebook network to let them know you’re searching. Post status updates to let your network know you’re job hunting, and reach out to the people in your network who might have the contacts to put you in touch with the right companies to find your new job. If you have 150 people in your network, and those people have 150 people in their networks, you can get your job search out to a lot of people in a short period of time.

#2. Build a Professional Presence on Facebook

If you want to use Facebook to interface with potential employers directly, make your profile into a job-friendly Facebook page. Add employer and education information, and highlight your interests relative to the potential job you’re seeking. Add professional-looking photos to your profile, and remove any photos that you wouldn’t want employers to see.

If you currently use Facebook exclusively for social interaction, you may want to revise your profile to make it more professional. This may include removing references that employers might find offensive, or references that will detract from employer’s assessment of your professional life. Delete inappropriate pictures, and references to parties or other activities that might give employers a second thought. You can and should still leave innocuous information in your profile, but remove the offensive, questionable, or highly-charged content. This includes pruning your Wall and deleting comments you wouldn’t want employers to see.

#3. Connect with Businesses

You can use Facebook to connect directly with many businesses. Do a Search to determine if companies you want to work with are on Facebook. If they are, use their Facebook pages to check them out and gather information. You can use the Facebook search function to find recruiters, support groups for the unemployed, resources for job hunting, and the companies with whom you want to work.

#4. Join Groups and Interact

Facebook gives you the option to join groups and interact with their members. You can use this to expand your Facebook network, talk to other people about job hunting and form important connections that can help you land your job. Groups also show up on your Facebook profile, and can tell potential employers about your interests.

#5. Don’t Lose a Job Because of Facebook

Even if you’re only using Facebook to reach out to your existing social network, you might still want to consider revising your Facebook profile to be more employer-friendly. If you’re not using Facebook to interface with employers, you might not be thinking about your user pictures or talking about that party you had last weekend. Many employers, however, now use social networking to check out potential employees. Even if you’re not presenting your Facebook page to employers, they can still find you there, so consider making your profile Private or revise what employers can see so your Facebook page doesn’t hurt your job hunt.

Freelance Forums That Can Help Get a Job

Dachary Carey — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:27:48 +0000

Freelance and work from home forums can provide valuable resources for freelancers. These forums provide support, information about freelancing and working from home, tips and often sources for work. Some of these forums are attached to freelance or work from home job sites, while others are independent forums. If you freelance or work at home, find a forum you like and stick around; you’ll need the social interaction, and the tips can be extremely useful.

Freelance Forums

Freelance forums are exclusively dedicated to topics about freelancing. These forums are great sources of information and tips. Some of these forums also contain marketplaces where members can share information about services.

TalkFreelance

TalkFreelance is a forum that is dedicated to all things freelance. TalkFreelance has a general discussion forum, a Marketplace for people to buy or sell services, a Design and Development forum and a Business and Website forum. TalkFreelance is a fairly active forum where freelancers share tips, opportunities and moral and technical support.

eLanceTalk

eLance Talk calls itself “A Society of Freelancers, Entrepreneurs & Web Professionals.” Not affiliated with the job site Elance, eLance Talk is a discussion board divided into many easy-to-browse forums. Readers can select from freelance forums, webmaster forums, design and development forums, marketplace forums and general forums. With nearly 5,000 members and nearly 3,000 threads, it’s a fairly active freelance forum, and growing.

The Freelance Forum

The Freelance Forum is exactly what it sounds like: a forum for freelancers. The Freelance Forum includes discussions relative to specific freelance professions, freelancing strategies, a marketplace and a general chat forum. The Freelance Forum isn’t as large as some of the other forums, but has a sleek design and user-friendly navigation.

FreelanceForum.com

FreelanceForum.com provides separate forums for user interaction, Web & graphic design, Web development & programming, website marketing and promotions, ecommerce discussions and freelancer service and offers. FreelanceForum.com is a small forum, but has some useful information for members.

Work at Home Forum

The Work at Home Forum has been around since 2004, and has a broad range of forums, sub-forums and useful information for work-at-home professionals. The Work at Home forum contains information on productivity, balancing work and home life, sub-forums on business programs, information on marketing, Web hosting and other important work-at-home information.

Freelance Forums Attached to Job Sites

These forums are attached to job sites, and provide both general information and information specific to their respective sites.

WhyDoWork.com

WhyDoWork.com is a work-at-home website with a forum attached. Members can chat about general stuff, share advice, tips and support, and discuss business, tax and legal issues. WhyDoWork also has forum resources for job leads, scam prevention and avoidance, making money online, advertising and promotion, webmaster resources and work at home articles and promotions. WhyDoWork is a one-stop forum with tons of valuable information for freelancers and work-at-home individuals.

FreelanceSwitch

FreelanceSwitch is another job site with an attached forum designed to provide users with information. The FreelanceSwitch forum isn’t separated by categories, but users can select from a list of topics including money matters, the business of freelancing, general chat and more. The FreelanceSwitch forum isn’t as easy to browse as some of the other forums, but provides a lot of valuable information.

Ways to Watch TV

Greg Johnson — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 03:43:28 +0000

Around Los Angeles, they are advertising the hell out of Justified, the new FX show starring Timothy Olyphant. The posters are awesome. And the early reviews are good, too. Problem: I couldn’t watch the Tuesday night premiere and my dvr recording function is busted and I’m too lazy to deal with Time Warner to fix it. What do I do? Well, it turns out I can download for immediate free viewing on either itunes or amazon. Impressive. Surely, this will only last a couple episodes, but by then, hopefully I’ll get my dvr fixed or be so hooked to the show, I’ll cancel other plans.

It seems to me TV is taking lessons from the music and the movie business and finding clever ways to expand their overall viewership. I don’t know if they’ve figured out the money, especially because it’s incredibly easy to not watch commercials these days. But I would have paid $1 or $2 to watch Justified. And I’m sure any fan of any show would be willing to do the same. $1 for 1 hr’s worth of entertainment at the end of the night. Not a bad deal for a working person where time matters.

It might make sense pretty soon only to have a high speed internet connection and just download and own any tv or movies one wants to watch.

E-Books, Grisham, and Does It Mean Anything?

Greg Johnson — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 02:14:35 +0000

John Grisham, a longtime holdout on e-books, is letting his entire backlist become Kindle-available.

“It’s too late for that, because there already was a corpse in the coffin, and those nails have already been driven,” said Otto Penzler, who has operated The Mysterious Book Shop for 31 years, continuing to struggle as he watched most of his fellow indie shops close. “One more author going to the dark side doesn’t make a difference, and I didn’t sell much Grisham anyway. It certainly is going to make a difference to Barnes & Noble and Borders.”

Just several years ago, Border and B&N were driving indy bookstores out of business. Now they are being driven out of business by Amazon. Not a very long reign at the top. Drug dealers last longer.

What are my thoughts on e-books? Not much. I was an early kindle adopter because I got one as a gift. I don’t use it much anymore, partially because I still get so many books as gifts and am a huge fan of used books (from stores or amazon) that tangible books are still cheaper for me. The big advantage of the kindle is being able to read manuscripts (for my job) without wasting paper to print. The newer DX kindle is big and is great for reading scripts…except I have the old version, which is terrible for scripts.

In my personal experience, I don’t buy fewer books because of Kindle. I read more.

The Myth of Economic Recovery

Greg Johnson — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 06:07:30 +0000

According to this Reason article, we are not on the road to economic recovery.

The root causes of what is now being called “The Great Recession” remain unsolved. The modest growth in the economy is almost entirely due to government spending, which is clearly unsustainable. Nearly ever single government response to the crisis is kicking the can down the road in one form or another — the only difference being how far. On the short end, Cash for Clunkers kicked the can just a couple of months, by spending $2 billion dollars, the government pushed up auto sales from the 4th quarter to the 3rd quarter. On the long end, the Bank bailouts are keep insolvent banks and homeowners afloat at a massive cost to the future taxpayer. In between, auto bailouts prop up unprofitable companies. Unemployment benefits are extended for longer and longer periods of time. And then there’s healthcare – the uncertainty causing small firms to take a “wait-and-see” approach to hiring and the public problem of compounding the already $30 trillion liability of Medicare and Medicaid.

Are these fixable problems? Can we reasonable expect to return to a time of steady economic growth, with jobs aplenty, and get past this anomaly? Or, were the prosperous 1990s and early 2000s the anomaly? Will the future get to get tougher and tougher as global competitiveness increases and we can no longer fuel growth on consumer spending funded by inflated real estate prices? And – is all of this part of a mega-trend – where technology is making fewer and fewer people necessary to the operation of society? What if 80% employment (20% unemployment) is all we need to run the ship?

In 1800, 80% of Americans were farmers. Now, less than 2% of Americans are farmers and they feed a country nearly 60x as large. The freeing up of manpower combined with technological innovations allowed development and innovation of all sorts of wonderful things – cars, computers, movies, airplanes – you know the story. But what has it done to work? The highly productive members of society are more productive than ever. Private planes ensure important people can get to important meetings in the quickest time possible. Computers allow important documents to arrive instantaneously to important people. Faster bandwidth allows the delivery of large amounts of information and video at the click of a button. Information is at our fingertips all the time. Someday Google and/or Apple will someday hold all the information in not only the world, but in the history of the world in a palm sized blackberry or ipad.

When that exists – when everyone is fed and has shelter and a college education and a fast internet connection – what will the not-as-important people do for work? Write novels?

White People Are Terrorists, Too

Greg Johnson — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:12:00 +0000

(Sarcasm) Excellent CNN article on how white people are terrorists, too. (Non-Sarcasm) In case anyone hasn’t heard this sophomoric point before…

Edward Said used to make this point – how Arabs were actually not all that more active in terrorism than disaffected whites and that all the hullabaloo was a result of Hollywood movies and media reports. This was 1994.

I suppose we are supposed to ignore, then, the subsequent events – the second Palestinian Infitada, Al Queda’s barrage of attacks against the United States, the various Al Queda offshoot attacks in Mumbai, London, Madrid, and so forth. Nevermind the tacit support of various Islamic Terrorist groups by all of the Arab, Iranian, and Pakistani intelligence services to fight proxy wars against both their near and far enemies. Sure – some idiot white dude flew a plane into an IRS building – but why am I not worried about these guys getting nukes and biological weapons as we all know Al Queda has tried to do? The KKK was a big problem in the American South in the 1920s-1960s, tacitly supported by reactionary politicians and police departments (I saw Mississippi Burning, okay), but guess what, it’s 2010. In 1940 German stormtroopers were marching across Europe and there are still some neo-Nazis today who do stupid, anti-Semitic stuff. But guess what? They don’t have popular support or actual support by any government or intelligence service.

I have an idea. Arab, Pakistani, and Iranian governments stop supporting terrorist groups, we’ll see less terrorists, and then we’ll stop “vilifying” them. Souuuund Good? (Aldo Raine voice).