Since October, we have seen a myriad of changes on Facebook – many dealing with privacy  issues. In this article, I want to address some of the key changes you may want to make.

• Open Graph: Facebook has partnered with several sites, including 60 new ones in the past week (includes Pinterest, TripAdvisor, Urbanspoon, and more). Basically, these websites can post your activity on your wall/timeline without having to “ask” your permission to post your activity. Solution: Go to your “Account Settings” and select “Apps.” Select “Edit” by each app to change permission levels. I personally select “Custom” and then chose “Only Me.”
• Timeline: As I have delivered presentations in the Southeast U.S., I have found that most people are not aware that if they add status, photo, place, or life event on their timeline to fill in their digital scrapbook that the update is actually default on a “Public” setting. Make sure you adjust this to the privacy level with which you are comfortable.
• Frictionless Sharing: Even if you log out of Facebook, the site can follow and track every web page you visit. Websites can write apps so that your activity on their pages can be shared automatically to your profile. Solution: The easiest solution is to use a separate browser for your Facebook activity (e.g. Google Chrome) and perhaps Firefox for your web browsing. Cookies cannot be tracked browser to browser.

In my next article, we will review some other privacy control features you may wish to use on Facebook. Just make sure your posts can pass the following tests: (1) Your update would not embarrass you if it ended up on the front page of a major newspaper and (2) You’d be fine with your grandmother reading it.

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.

Social media has given us many outlets to network with others, but it’s become such a convenience to  network online, that many are neglecting the face-to-face networking that is so vital in career management. Liz Lynch has written a great book on Networking called Smart Networking: Attract a Following in Person and Online. Keith Ferrazzi has written two books on networking: Never Eat Alone and Who’s Got Your Back.

So, who comprises a network? Everyone you know, so in essence, you are networking everyday. But, how about networking events? Find out which events and meetings that your network attends to find networking events that might be helpful in your career transition. Ideally, you want to find out where your target audience hangs out. Have a clear cut strategy for these events and remember networking’s golden rule: GIVE.

I’ll share a few tips for networking:

1. Do have a business card to hand out. Make sure it includes your contact information, your job title, URL (could be your LinkedIn profile, VisualCV, web portfolio, blog, etc.). Create a short tagline that shows your unique promise of value / personal brand.
2. Create your elevator pitch. A great resource can be found at http://www.15secondpitch.com. The feature I appreciate is that they only give you 500 characters total to write your pitch. The Pitch Wizard asks you a series of questions to help you formulate your statement. Memorize this as a way to introduce yourself quickly, so you can focus on how you can give.
3. Find out how you can help others at these events. It could be as simple as sending them an article link to a resource you know about that would help them solve a challenge.
4. Do let people know you are in a career transition and are interested in networking opportunities with companies. Ask if they know anyone in your targeted companies.
5. Collect their business cards. Before you leave, make notes on the back of their business card of who they know, how you might help them, etc. Email or write a follow-up note after the networking event to let them know how much you enjoyed meeting them and be sure to include a line or two where you comment on something you discussed.

Finding networking events seems to be a challenge for most, so I’ll share a few tips here on how to find local events in your industry:

• Your local newspaper will generally list upcoming networking events with dates, times, and locations.
• If you are a member of Facebook, then type in your industry (i.e. marketing). At the bottom of the drop-down box, you will find “See more results for marketing.” You will click on this hyperlink to see the results for business pages and groups. You can further hone your search by adding a location such as your state or city/state. Many times, these geographic-specific groups will host live, networking events and give you a chance to meet your fellow group members.
• On LinkedIn, you will see “Groups” on the toolbar. When you click “Groups,” you will see a dropdown of choices. Click “Groups Directory” and search for industry-specific groups and you can narrow your search by including geographic location. Like Facebook, belonging to these groups may provide you with opportunities to have in-person, networking events.
• TweetUps are organized through Twitter and can be industry-specific groups as well. You can use a service like Twtvite (http://twtvite.com/) to organize a TweetUp or to create your own networking group.
• If you are interested in online networking, Twitter has lots of different chats, including #HireFriday, #JobHuntChat, and more. You can find a growing list of chats at this website link: http://tinyurl.com/TwitterChatList.

Again, your network includes everyone you know, so make sure to remember them on important dates. When you read something that they might enjoy or benefit, send them the article or blog link. Keep them top of mind, so you will stay top of mind with them.

Your network needs to grow. If you stay in a comfort zone with the same people, you may be missing critical relationships that could facilitate new opportunities, whether it be career advancement, the potential to work on a coveted project, and much more.

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.

LinkedIn announced the “Apply with LinkedIn” button for company career portals (6/1/11)

LinkedIn will be providing job seekers the ability to use an “Apply with LinkedIn” button in the future at career portals, thus dramatically simplifying the application process. This feature has recently launched, so you will want to make sure that your LinkedIn profile is complete (for tips, check out Jason Alba’s book, “I’m on LinkedIn-Now What???”).

The benefits for a company to use the “Apply with LinkedIn” button is threefold: They can attract high quality candidates who may not have a resume readily available; they can easily see referrals and recommendations; and they can stand out by giving an additional, easy way for a job seeker to apply for their company.

For the job seeker, the button makes applying a breeze. Plus, the job seeker can then easily see if they have any connections with that particular company and if so, they can ask for a referral. Since networking accounts for ~60-80% of jobs landed, this is an excellent way to get your foot in the door!

Monster launched the “BeKnown” app – first move by a major job board to incorporate technology within a social media site (6/27/11)

One of my predictions is that social media will eventually become the forerunner to job boards. At one time, job searching was done via classifieds and word-of-mouth, but job boards soon became the forerunner.

Susan Whitcomb of Career Coach Academy has stated that her research found that an average Fortune 500 Company spent $1.2 million posting jobs on job boards. Now, a similar company might spend an average of $60,000 on LinkedIn and at this time, tweeting job postings on Twitter are free.

BeKnown works similarly to LinkedIn with the exception that it taps into your Facebook network to show you the connections you have on Facebook with your targeted companies. You can search for jobs on BeKnown without ever having to log out of your Facebook.

Google launches Google+ to compete with Facebook and Twitter (6/29/11)

As an early adopter of Google+, I can say that this time Google has definitely launched some hefty competition. You can start a hangout and video chat with up to 10 people, find relevant information in your industry or area of thought leadership through Sparks, and see/follow the stream of conversation that a post generates.

Google+ recently launched to the public. The interface is very user-friendly and since Facebook’s recent changes, Google+ grew 1269% during the week of 9/24/2011. According to Experian HitWise, Google+ ranks 8^th in social networks, following right behind LinkedIn and Twitter.

Google launches Tool for Online Reputation Management

Check out the tool on your Google Dashboard called “Me on the Web.” You can easily set up a search alert for your name so that you will receive an email when your name shows up on the Internet. Google also has a URL removal request tool in case there is digital dirt that you are having difficulty removing. However, Google determines whether or not this is a legitimate request.

The FTC gave the company, Social Intelligence, the green light to run social media background checks of a person’s Internet and social media history

Now more than ever, your online identity needs to be stellar. In December 2009, research commissioned by Microsoft found that 79% of U.S. hiring managers and job recruiters reviewed online information about potential job candidates. If someone Googled you, are they likely to find information that supports that personal brand for which you want to be known or not? Consider this-in this same study, they found that 70% of U.S. hiring managers have rejected candidates based on what they found online about that person. Information is used when you apply for a job or even college (study done by Kaplan in November 2010 found that 9% of business schools, 15% of law schools, and 14% of medical schools look at social networking sites to evaluate prospective students). What does Google say about you?

More and more companies, recruiters, employers, and admissions teams are utilizing your online identity as part of the criterion during the application process. Google your name (using quotation marks, i.e. “Kristen Jacoway”) and make sure that your results are on-brand and for which you want to be know.

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.

One of the keys in developing a solid targeted company prospect list is to do your research! One little known trick to researching conversations about a particular company on your list is to use a Twitter Management Tool called Hootsuite. Let’s look at how this can work for you:

First, type your keyword (or company name) in quotation marks in the search box located in the right-hand corner. Beside the word you type is a little circle with lines. This is the way you can geotarget a company in your area that might be a franchised location or have a common name.

When you click that circle, it will bring up a pop-up box that looks like this:

Click on “Share Location.” Once you do this, you will get a pop-up box of the tweet conversations that occurring about that company. Is it positive or negative? If it’s negative, can you think of strategies that might help position the company in a better light? This is part of the SWOT analysis research I encourage people to do (I’m in a Job Search–Now What???: Using LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter as Part of Your Job Search Strategy).

However, what if the company is not local to you and it’s located in another state? Go to Google Maps and type in the name, address, and city/state of the company as shown below:

Go to the Gear icon at the top right-side of the Google Maps. Select “Maps Labs.”

A pop-up box will appear. Click “Enable” by the “LatLng Marker.” Click “Save Changes.”

With this feature enabled, you will just need to hover over the marker of the location to get the exact latitude and longitude numbers by clicking the “shift” key.

Copy these numbers and then go back to HootSuite to set up an advanced search. Click on “Add Stream” on the left-hand upper side of HootSuite. Go to the “Search” tab and enter the information. For my example, I entered: Verizon Communications geocode:40.717,-74.013,50mi

The important step is there can be no spaces after the word “geocode.” You will want to set up a parameter of how many miles you want to see conversations. For this example, I input “50 mi” for 50 miles. Click “Create Stream” and you’ll be able to follow conversations about that company within the parameter you defined.

This post contains an affiliate link that the FTC requires that a disclosure be made. An affiliate link simply means that if you click and purchase the product, the dealer may provide a commission to me.

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.

Anyone who follows social media knows that it is filled with constant change; however, within 6 weeks, we saw 7 major announcements within the social media space. Here’s a recap:

LinkedIn announced the “Apply with LinkedIn” button for company career portals (6/1/11)

LinkedIn will be providing job seekers the ability to use an “Apply with LinkedIn” button in the future at career portals, thus dramatically simplifying the application process. When this feature rolls out, you will want to make sure that your LinkedIn profile is complete (for tips, check out Jason Alba’s book, “I’m on LinkedIn-Now What???).

Monster launched the “BeKnown” app – first move by a major job board to incorporate technology within a social media site (6/27/11)

One of my predictions is that social media will eventually become the forerunner to job boards. At one time, job searching was done via classifieds and word-of-mouth, but job boards soon became the forerunner. Susan Whitcomb of Career Coach Academy has stated that her research found that an average Fortune 500 Company spent $1.2 million posting jobs on job boards. Now, a similar company might spend an average of $60,000 on LinkedIn and at this time, tweeting job postings on Twitter are free.

Google launches Google+ to compete with Facebook and Twitter (6/29/11)

As an early adopter of Google+, I can say that this time Google has definitely launched some hefty competition. You can start a hangout and video chat with up to 10 people, find relevant information in your industry or area of thought leadership through Sparks, and see/follow the stream of conversation that a post generates.

Google does not renew contract with Twitter to provide real-time search (real-time search index featuring tweets and as-it-happens updates) 7/2/2011

Many speculate that Google did not renew this contract with Twitter because of Google+. My Google+ profile is now my #1 Google search result, but does include a hyperlink to follow me on Twitter.

MySpace is sold for $30M

We see social media platforms come and go, but I remember not so long ago when Facebook was celebrating the fact that they had exceeded the number of registered users that MySpace had at that time. Google+ has reported 18 million members (as of last Friday) have joined and it has only been around less than a month.

Google launches Tool for Online Reputation Management

Check out the tool on your Google Dashboard called “Me on the Web.” You can easily set up a search alert for your name so that you will receive an email when your name shows up on the Internet. Google also has a URL removal request tool in case there is digital dirt that you are having difficulty removing. However, Google determines whether or not this is a legitimate request and has the final say if the URL is removed or not.

The FTC gave the company, Social Intelligence, the green light to run social media background checks of a person’s Internet and social media history

Now more than ever, your online identity needs to be stellar. Information is used when you apply for a job or even college (study done by Kaplan in November 2010 found that 9% of business schools, 15% of law schools, and 14% of medical schools look at social networking sites to evaluate prospective students). What does Google say about you?

Article first appeared in YOUnique

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.

How-to video on how to create a hover pop-up box over your name that contains more information about you besides just your name and place of employment. Hats off to Atom McCree for writing about this trick on Mashable.com. My video is a step-by-step screen share of how you can optimize your profile which makes it easier for people to decide which circle to place you. Eliminates the need for people to have to click on your Profile to try to learn more about you.

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.

In December 2009, research commissioned by Microsoft found that 79% of U.S. hiring managers and job recruiters reviewed online information about potential job candidates. If someone Googled you, are they likely to find information that supports that personal brand for which you want to be known or not? Consider this-in this same study, they found that 70% of U.S. hiring managers have rejected candidates based on what they found online about that person.

Surprisingly, though, as I poll audiences where I speak, people are still quite alarmed to hear these statistics and equally as distressing, have never Googled themselves. I wanted to illustrate a few famous examples of how lapses in judgment on social networks have cost people jobs and opportunities.

• Connor Riley got a job offer from Cisco and tweeted, “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.” Tim Levad, a Cisco employee, tweeted back, “Who is the hiring manager? I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the Web.”

• The voice of the Aflac duck, Comedian Gilbert Gottfried, tweeted the following after the Japanese tsunami, “Japan is really advanced. They don’t go to the beach. The beach comes to them.” Aflac fired Gottfried following his tweet.

• A student / intern in an educational setting got fired for posting a picture on her MySpace account showing her drinking and a caption saying, “Drunken Pirate.” The university where she was attending also denied her degree just days before graduation. She sued, but a federal district judge rejected the claim saying that because she was a public employee whose photo didn’t relate to matters of public concern, her post was not protected speech.

Be mindful of what you tweet or comment on Facebook: Companies have employed the utilization of social media listening tools like Radian6, TweetBeep, Google Alerts, Company Buzz, and more. The majority will “hear” if you use their name. 

Set Your Privacy Settings: Most social networking sites offer privacy settings. If you are using a social network strictly for personal use, then set high privacy controls. Think about your objective for using the site—is it to establish your thought leadership and expertise? If so, you will not want high privacy settings so that you can be found.

Sign-up for Google Alerts for Your Name: Go to Google.com/alerts and sign-up to receive an email when your name appears on the Internet. Again, put your name in quotation marks to receive clean results.

In conclusion, monitor your online brand so that you can be proactive in managing your reputation.

This article first appeared in YOUnique Personal Branding Newsletter

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.

In December 2009, research commissioned by Microsoft found that 79% of U.S. hiring managers and job recruiters reviewed online information about potential job candidates. If someone Googled you, are they likely to find information that supports that personal brand for which you want to be known or not? Consider this – in this same study, they found that 70% of U.S. hiring managers have rejected candidates based on what they found online about that person.

Not only are we finding that employers and recruiters are utilizing Google as a background check, but also post-secondary institutions. Kaplan found in their research that 9% of business schools, 15% of law schools, and 14% of medical schools are already using social networking sites to facilitate evaluation of students during the admissions process.

Three Tips for Building and Monitoring Your Online Identity

1. Google Yourself – Place your name in quotation marks (i.e. “Kristen Jacoway”) in the search box on Google. What shows up in the first three pages? iProspect conducted a study that found that 92% of people survey only view the first three pages of results. Does Google reflect your unique promise of value that you can offer to a potential employer?
2. Are You Digitally Distinct, Disguised, Dissed, or Dabbling? – You can use a tool called the Online Identity Calculator (http://www.onlineidcalculator.com) to discover how you compare with people at your professional level. The tool helps you to make sense of your Google results. Knowing what Google says about you is a critical piece of your career management.
3. Know Your Personal Brand – Before you begin to build Google results, you must know your personal brand attributes and how to convey how you are unique and different from everyone else who has the same job title as you (you can start a free, 15-day personal brand assessment at www.reachcc.com/360v4register).

What if you have a common name, like Bob Smith? A relatively new tool, called Vizibility (http://www.vizibility.com) launched in 2009 raises your visibility with the Google results that are only applicable to you and best demonstrates your skills and abilities.

To join Vizibility, you simply enter your first and last name, companies where you’ve work, and click “Get Vizibility.” The next page will show you the Google results found on your name. The feature I love is that you can remove listings that are not about you – and you can rank order up to five results to show up on your “Google Me” badge that Vizibility will generate.

Once you’ve selected your top 5 results, then click “Save and Get Button.” You will then create your Search Me account where you customize your Vizibility URL (e.g http://www.vizibility.com/KristenJacoway). You can use your Vizibility vanity URL on your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter profile, and more.

Tips to Protect Your Online Reputation

• Be mindful of what you tweet or comment on Facebook: Companies have employed the utilization of social media listening tools like Radian6, TweetBeep, Google Alerts, Company Buzz, and more. The majority will “hear” if you use their name.  Likewise, be careful of what you say in general. I had a client that made a negative comment on a Facebook Fan Page and the comment ended up being on page 1 of her Google results. If you wouldn’t want a potential employer to read it, then don’t type it!
• Set Your Privacy Settings: Most social networking sites offer privacy settings. If you are using a social network strictly for personal use, then set high privacy controls. Think about your objective for using the site—is it to establish your thought leadership and expertise? If so, you will not want high privacy settings so that you can be found.
• Be careful of what you are doing AT ALL TIMES: Not to increase paranoia, but be mindful of what you are doing. With the rise of people having cameras and video cameras on their phones, all it takes is a couple of clicks for a compromising picture or video to be uploaded to the Internet with your name tagged (making it a searchable result). The very nature of the Internet is viral and can be spread very quickly causing it to be difficult to remove.
• Sign-up for Google Alerts for Your Name: Go to Google.com/alerts and sign-up to receive an email when your name appears on the Internet. Again, put your name in quotation marks to receive clean results. Monitor your online brand so that you can be proactive in managing your reputation.

If you have digital dirt (i.e. anything that is unflattering about you on the Internet), be proactive and take steps to remove or push down the dirt in your results. Contact the owner of the website or administrator of the page and ask nicely for the content to be removed. Contract with a company such as Reputation.com if your attempts to get content removed are not successful. In conclusion, monitor your brand online and offline and make sure it’s consistent for how you want to be known.

Additional Information

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.

Anyone who has been in the job search in the past knows how paralyzing it is to figure out where to start. In this article, I am going to walk you through the initial steps of how you can start your job search by compiling a targeted prospecting and networking list through LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com). You want to develop a list of your Tier A, Tier B, and Tier C companies, so you can better organize your job searching efforts. I’d suggest only including your top 10-20 in the Tier A list and then let the rest be categorized accordingly in the Tier B and C lists.

5 Steps for Developing Your Job Search Prospecting List via LinkedIn

1. Go to LinkedIn.com and sign in.
2. Click on the “Companies” Tab.
3. In the “Company Name or Keyword,” type in the Industry keyword. If you want to narrow your search, include the postal code. For example, I typed in “Healthcare” for the industry and my zip code to narrow my search results.
4. Click “Search Companies.”
5. On the left-hand side, you can modify your search results. For example, if you want to return results for companies who have job postings on LinkedIn, then click the last box on the left-hand side and click the “search” button.

LinkedIn provides some great, free information about company size, website URL, revenues, company description, and how you are connected with people who work at the company. You can follow companies of interest and receive e-mails when people leave the company, are hired into a position, or promoted into a new position. The interesting angle is you will also see the position vacated, thus giving you insight into a possible “hidden job market.”

On the company page, you can click, “Check Out Insightful Statistics About {Company’s Name} Employees.” Here, you will see where that company’s employees worked prior to being hired. Why is this helpful? You might discover other companies you never considered or knew about to include on your job searching prospecting list. The companies are generally hyperlinked, so you can learn more about a particular company on their company page.

Cast Your Networking Relationships Far and Wide

The second piece in your job search plan is to develop a targeted list of networking contacts within these companies that you’ve listed. An internal recommendation within a company facilitated by a networking contact is going to yield more results than a cold-call. Consider these facts regarding the competitive job market landscape: 98.3% of companies are defined as small businesses (100 employees or less) and less than .29% of companies have more than 500 employees. The know, like, and trust factor is going to be a critical component, especially in the small business sector.

Below, I’ve listed five steps for locating targeted networking contacts on LinkedIn:

1. Filter your search results on Company Search by using the following parameters: Location, single industry target, and second-degree connections. Hopefully, at this point, you have several first-degree connections so this will yield useful information.
2. You will arrive at your results page and for each result, you will see a hyperlink to the number of people who are in your network. These people will be second-degree connections since you selected it in your search parameters.
3. You can then click on the “19 people in your network,” for example, to get an expanded view of these connections from each company who are in your network.
4. On the expanded view of the second-degree connection, you will see “In Common: 1 (or more) shared connection(s).” It is a hyperlink and when you click it, you will discover exactly how you are connected with this person.
5. Review the person’s profile – do you have common interests, graduated from the same university, belong to the same LinkedIn groups, etc.? Before connecting, establish some common ground and include in your invitation to connect with the person. You might want to follow the person on Twitter, subscribe to their blog, join the LinkedIn groups to which they belong, and more.

Connect with people at your target companies with whom you will add value and remember networking’s number-one rule: G.I.V.E. Always looks for ways to connect people with other people who can facilitate opportunities, send articles that might interest them, provide resources for projects that you know would help streamline what they are doing, and more.

As long as you give, it will come full circle. Both times my husband was in a job search (one job was off-shored and the other company closed its doors two years after he was hired), it was a networking contact that facilitated the next job opportunity for him. Target your job search by developing a focused list on where you want to work and engage in connecting with networks.

Additional Information about LinkedIn

This article first appeared in the Atlantic City Weekly

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.

In a recent article, I introduced you to three of my favorite WordPress plugins. In this issue, I’m sharing three more plugins that I are also really helpful with my blog:

• Broken Link Checker – As your website/blog grows, so do the links you place to direct people to view another website, blog post, video, and more. However, what happens if that page is deleted or a site is moved to a different domain? Your reader will be directed to a dreaded “404 Not Found” error page. This plugin resolves the mystery to determine which of your links is no longer working so you can either remove or correct the link.

• Facebook Like Button – Facebook incorporated a unique feature with the new like button. When you click on the “Like” button on a blog post or article that has this feature enabled, you will automatically share the content with your Facebook friends:

• Tweetly Updater – Easily update Twitter with your new blog posts as they publish. You can also add hashtags for your updates, such as #FB (for Facebook) and #LI (for LinkedIn). If you have installed Selective Tweets on Facebook and have checked the box on your LinkedIn account for Twitter to update your LinkedIn when you add the hashtag #LI, then you will ping your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn account when your blog post publishes without visiting any of these social media platforms.

©2012 Kristen Jacoway | Career Design Coach. All Rights Reserved.