Dan Schawbel on Social Media and Job Hunting

In his 7 Secrets to Getting Your Next Job Using Social Media post on Mashable, Dan Schawbel of the Personal Branding Blog highlights some of the ways a job seeker can leverage social media in their job hunt. I especially like the first four tips:

1. Conduct a people search instead of a job search
2. Use attraction-based marketing to get job offers
   
3. Be proactive on Twitter
4. Capitalize on LinkedIn

All of those approaches have worked well for me and for others I know, and I recommend reading Dan's full post. I found his listing of "people search engines" useful.

I was surprised, however, to see that his 7 Ways didn't include the most important aspect of leveraging social media in a job search: integrating what you do in social media together with what you do in the real world. It's always about people (and about the ideas you share with them), and social media simply gives you a new way to connect with people. You still have to connect, and you can't network only by computer!

Photo uploaded by gotplaid?