I love social media. I find it to be a great tool to increase my real world knowledge in HR and a way to seek the opinion of some seasoned HR Pro’s. I’ve added a Twitter widget to my iGoogle homepage, downloaded a Twitter app for my Windows Mobile phone and just created my Visual CV page; LinkedIn came first. Google Reader has become an essential part of my morning routine. I even Google potential candidates, with deeper digging for management and up.
But, with all this technology that can be used for goofing off, how do you convince your boss that you aren’t following Ashton and Demi to see where they are having lunch? How do you convince your IT Department that it’s the 21st Century and Twitter/LinkedIn, even Facebook can be used as a marketing or recruiting tool and not specifically for connecting with past boyfriends?
When you work for a company that doesn’t embrace Social Media, how to do bring them into the current way of thinking?
Social Media is the new black, the new ‘it’. We’ve evolved from billboards and printed ads in newspapers. If you don’t have an online presence of some sort, you are being left in the dust by those that do.
That goes equally as well with candidates, just looking at newspaper ads and applying on Monster don’t cut it anymore. If you send me your resume and it had links to VisualCV, your blog, Twitter, Facebook…..I’m impressed and I’m going to remember you. The resume straight out of MS Word Wizard….not so much.
To candidates and workplaces that still operate like its 1995, embrace the new world, it wont bite you and you’ll be better off for having done so.
