“With the current unstable economy and rising unemployment rate, more people are heading online to search for jobs, and interestingly not just the unemployed. The career development category also grew 20 percent year-over-year among at work users, suggesting that many people are trying to build up their resumes and get a sense of the job market before the next potential layoff,” –Chuck Schilling, research director, agency & media, Nielsen Online.

In what is surely a sign of the economic times we live in today, Nielsen.com reports that there was a “20% year-over-year increase in unique visitors to career development sites, which grew from 41.5 million visitors in January 2008 to 49.7 million visitors in January 2009.” Here are some of the eye opening and interesting facts about Nielsen’s findings:

1. 65+ Age Group was the fastest growing group in the career development category increasing 41% from 2.5 million unique visitors in January 2008 to 3.6 million visitors in January of 2009 according to job blog Cheezhead.com.
   
2. Careerbuilder.com was the #1 career development “destination in January 2009, with 20.8 million unique visitors.”
3. Yahoo “Hot Jobs” was the #2 career development destination with 11.7 million visitors
4. Monster.com was the #3 career development destination with 9.5 million unique visitors

The following is a breakdown by age group the web traffic to career development sites

Courtesy Marketwire.com and Nielsen.com “Web Traffic to Career Development Sites Increases 20 Percent Year-Over-Year in January, According to Nielsen Online”

If you are an entrepreneur or job seeker one of the best ways to network, market, and gain audience for your product or service(s) is to leverage the power of social media networks.

The following is a list of the top 25 social media “networks” as ranked by traffic (visits per month) in a great retrospective article by Andy Kazeniac of Compete.com “Social Networks: Facebook Takes Over the Top Spot, Twitter Climbs.” This is a retro look at Andy’s original ranking of the Top 25 last year.  Note: Twitter came in at #22 on that list–look at them today.

Top 25 Social Media Networks:

Courtesy of Compete.com:

Job Seekers

For job seekers #5, LinkedIn and #3, Twitter are the most vital social networks you can utilize to deliver your value, network, and research opportunities.

Entrepreneurs and Companies

Your social networks of choice will depend on your audience demographic and what you have to offer. Facebook, truly a social site, is great for lifestyle and consumer offers. LinkedIn is for business-to-business networking. Twitter spans both business and consumer, and Myspace reaches the youngest crowd.

“Hiring managers are using the Internet to get a more well-rounded view of job candidates in terms of their skills, accomplishments, and overall fit within the company”–Rosemary Haefner Vice President of Human Resource Careerbuilder.com

Susan and I presented our workshop “Web 2.0’s Impact on Job Seekers: The Changing Roles of the Resume, Job Search, and Job Seeker” at CSIX this past Tuesday to a packed house of over 110 hopeful job seekers. As we settled into facilitating this workshop, we realized that for the first time we were about to present our complete thesis and theme.

We have been supporting blogging as a more powerful and proactive “living” resume since June of 2008. Yet Tuesday was our first opportunity to evangelize the emergence of a paradigm shift, where social media tools and Web 2.0 strategies replaced the resume, as a job seeker’s main marketing tool.

Web 2.0 Paradigm Shift in Communications

The decades of mass media dominance and stranglehold over the control and flow of information is waning. Today is the greatest time in human history for communication, connectivity, collaboration, networking, and delivering your message of value, expertise, and experience to your strategicially targeted hiring managers and companies.

There is a global conversation going on between bloggers, people networking and finding opportunities on Linkedin, resources and messages being broadcast on Twitter, and companies searching for human capital talent throughout the social media stratosphere.

Companies Adopting Web 2.0 and Blogs: Tools to Promote Business

Our friend and blogger Ray Schiel, of globalsocialmedianetwork.com, has produced a massive resource page that outlines the participation of 105 major corporations in blogging, 64 on Facebook pages, 12 podcasting, 12 crowdsourcing sites, and 100’s of companies microblogging on Twitter.

Job Seekers’ Tip: These social media tools are being used by major corporations to promote their products, services, and business practices. If you want to connect with your target company, and they utilize social media tools, then this is a major opportunity to connect as well as demonstrate your understanding of their efforts.

Companies Monitoring Web 2.0 and Social Media: Screening and Hiring Practices

Not only are major corporations utilizing these tools for their own business practices, they are using them to find new talent and perform due diligence on potential applicants. Computer World’s “One in Five Employers Uses Social Networks in Hiring Process” outlines a Careerbuilder.com survey of 31,000 employers. The results are very compelling:

1. 24% of hiring managers “found content on social networks that helped convince them to hire a candidate.” In addition hiring managers said that “profiles showing a professional image and solid references can boost a candidates chances for a job.”

2. 22% of the 31,000 employers said they “peruse social networks to screen candidates.”

3. 9% more of the 31,000 employers said they are planning to do so

4. A total of 9,600 employers are going to search for candidates and perform due diligence rather than rely on resumes to tell a job seekers story

Deliver Your Value First

The conclusion is that job seekers must deliver their value first before attempting to deliver their resume. Social media and Web 2.0 are changing job search. The resume is no longer a job seeker’s marketing tool. It is up to job seekers, in this very rough job market, to utilize these tools in order to stand apart and become memorable.

Robert Scoble is one of the most successful bloggers with his Scobleizer blog, technology evangelists, and well respected resources in Silicon Valley. His article “If you are laid off, here’s how to socially network” is a call to arms and a blue print for EVERY job seeker. Please heed his warning and take the steps Robert outlines. And by the way, many of these steps are steps we have already identified, written about, and continually evangelize in our Inner Architect business.

We added our comments to some of Scoble’s steps denoted by “IA.” The following are what we feel are the most important of Robert’s 19 steps for job seekers.

Scoble’s Steps for Job Seekers:

1. Your blog is your resume. You need one and it needs to have 100 posts on it about what you want to be known for.

IA: 100% agree with this statement except the idea of producing 100 posts. Your blog is your ability to deliver your value message of expertise, experience, and accomplishments–no resume can come close.

2. Remove all friends from your facebook and twitter accounts that will embarrass you. We do look. If we see photos of people getting drunk with you that is a bad sign. Get rid of them. They will NOT help you get a job.

3. Demonstrate you have kids and hobbies, but they should be 1% of your public persona, not 99%. Look at my blog here. You’ll see my son’s photo on Flickr once in a while. But mostly I talk about the tech industry, cause that’s the job I want to have: talking to geeks and innovators.

IA: You are best served by creating a message of your value, expertise, and experience as the themes for your content on your blog. You are building a case for why people should be interested in you. You also want to be considered a “resource” of great information.

4. Put what job you want into your blog’s header. Visit Joel Spolsky’s blog. He’s “on software.” That’s a major hint that if he were looking for a job that he is totally, 100%, thinking about software. If you want a job as a chef, you better have a blog that looks like you love cooking, like this.

5. Post something that teaches me something about what you want to do every day. If you want to drive a cab, you better go out and take pictures of cabs. Think about cabs. Put suggestions for cabbies up. Interview cabbies. You better have a blog that is nothing but cabs. Cabs. Cabs. Cabs all the time.

IA: This is a critical point and should be the driving force behind what you write for your blog.

6. If you want to be a plumber, look for other plumbers to add to Twitter, friendfeed, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Remove all others. Be 100% focused on what you want to do.

IA: Twitter is one of the most important free social media tools to bring awareness of what you can offer an employer, building your credibility, and networking within your niche.

7. On Twitter you can tell me what you had for lunch, but only after you posted 20 great items about what you want to do. Look at Tim O’Reilly’s tweet stream. Very little noise. Just great stuff that will make you think (he wants a job as a thinker, so do you get it yet?)

IA: The best strategy for what you should “tweet” is to provide information that is helpful, interesting, and has relevance to either a niche, industry, or public awareness.

8. Invite influentials out to lunch. Getting a job is now your profession. If you were a salesperson, how would you get sales? You would take people out to lunch who can either buy what you’re selling, or influence others who can buy. That means take other bloggers (but only if they cover what you want to do) out to lunch. That means taking lots of industry executives out to lunch.

IA: We can not agree more. Too many job seekers are stuck in the past where a job search was a part time activity. If you are not ready and willing to treat your job search as your JOB you are in for a very long period of unemployment

9. Send out resumes. Make sure yours is up to date and top notch on LinkedIn and other sites where employers look for employees. Craig’s List. Monster. Etc.

IA: We agree that resumes are still part of the requirements for landing a job. But the role of the resume has changed. The resume is NO LONGER your marketing tool for landing an interview leading to a job. Until you understand this fact, you will be stuck in “response” mode, applying for

10. Go to industry events. I have a list of tech industry events up on Upcoming.org. If you want to be a plumber, go to where contractors go. Etc. Etc. Make sure you have clear business cards. Include your photo. Include your Twitter and LinkedIn addresses. Your cell phone. Your blog address. And the same line that’s at the top of your blog. Joel’s should say “on software.” Yours should say what you love to do. Hand them out, ask for theirs. Make notes on theirs. Email them later with your LinkedIn and blog URLs and say “you’ll find lots of good stuff about xxxxxxxx industry on my blog.”

IA: Again we agree that the blog should be the “hub” of your marketing plan in landing a job. Linkedin is your new resume and critical to notifying people you are open to “new opportunities.”

11. When you meet someone who can hire and who you want to work for. Follow them on Twitter. Facebook. LinkedIn. Their blog. Stalk them without being “creepy.” Learn everything you can about them. Build a friendfeed room with all their stuff. That way when they say on Twitter “I have a job opening” you can be the first one to Tweet back.

IA: What Robert is alluding to is your strategy to connect with hiring managers and companies. It is up to YOU to be proactive and place yourself in position to be noticed, appreciated, and ultimately contacted back.

12. Tell others where the jobs are. One thing I learned in college is by helping other people get jobs you’ll get remembered. So, retweet jobs messages (if they are relevant to your professional friends and to you). Blog about job openings. Help people get jobs. Hold lunches for people who are jobless. Some of them will get jobs and they’ll remember you and invite you along.

IA: The law of reciprocity or what comes around goes around does happen. According to Jeffrey Gitomer, expert networking and sales trainer, you must give first before you can expect to receive. It is that simple.

I landed my first corporate, aka “real”, job out of college in early 1985. The company, Moore Business Forms the largest printing-forms provider in the world, was just finishing a hiring push for sales and business development talent. Please read this article; I have a question I would like you to ask yourself at the end of the piece. Here are some facts about my job search.

State of Technology

In 1985 there was no Internet, no fax machines, no cell phones in regular usage, and at that time answering machines were just beginning to hit the commercial market–I did not own one at the time.

Training and Resources

In 1985 the cottage industry of coaching, life-business or other niches, did not exist. The word tutor was attached primarily to language learning or students still in school. For job seekers interested in resume writing help, you could hire a resume writing service, buy an instruction book, or go to the library for resources.

Instead of instantly finding your job search answers via an online search, I was forced to drive to my nearest library or book store (national bookstore chains not prevalent at the time) wasting time traveling to and from my resource in search of answers.

1985 Job Search Activities that helped me land my job:

1. Purchased resume writing book; wrote my own resume
2. Crafted custom cover letters per job
3. Joined my alumni association
4. Called my friends, family, and contacts to announce my job search
5. Visited my library and bookstore 3 times per week in search
6. Collected 5 References for hiring managers to call
7. Hired a “Headhunter” aka recruiter
8. Read two newspaper’s Want Ads sections everyday; career or job sections dedicated to job search did not exist
9. Visited the unemployment office job board once per week
10. Spammed my local Chamber of Commerce with my resume

My Results

I sent over 150 resumes in a 5 month period. I hired a headhunter who continuously sent me out to interviews that were less than ideal–round peg in a square hole theory on her part. I read the newspaper want ad sections. I finally identified Moore as the opportunity for me. I requested my headhunter arrange an interview which she secured. I nailed the interview and I was hired the same day; nearly 5 months after beginning the job search process.

The Revelation

After being offered the Moore job, my manager asked me “Dean why didn’t you just come in and ask for an interview? Why did you go through a headhunter-I would have hired you and been more impressed if you had come to us directly.” Now it sunk in for me. I just spent $1,800 (1985 money mind you) when all I had to do was deliver my value directly to the company and my manager.

Ask Yourself:

• Are the majority of your job search functions, steps, and marketing based on the same “stuff” I did 25 years ago?
• Is the major focus, and marketing efforts, of your job search based on your resume?
• Do you approach each day like you would when you go to a job; simply put, are you treating your job search like you would a job that an employer pays you to perform?
• Are you educating yourself each day in order to add to your skill sets?
• Do you have an organized and structured plan you are executing?
• Have you performed your research and due diligence on the companies you target?
• Do you have a list of the companies and managers?
• Do you understand how to measure your job search efforts
• Are you networking in the right places online and in the real world?
• Do you understand how to provide value instead of bringing the hard sell approach in your job search efforts?