The Web 2.0 Job Finder: Winning Social Media Strategies to Get the Job You Want From Fortune 500 Hiring Pros - Softcover

Greene, Brenda; Byrne, Coleen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1601631588 ISBN 13: 9781601631589

Publisher: Weiser, 2011

Synopsis

Social networking sites are dramatically changing the way people stay connected. Not surprisingly, sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook, along with "tweets," blogs, and personal Web pages, are now key components of how job seekers discover exciting new opportunities and how companies find promising new employees.

Networking is the single most effective tool for finding a job--and social networking makes the networking effort incredibly more powerful. The ability to create, develop and maintain a social network that boosts a career is one of the biggest challenges for the 21st-century job seeker.

Based on the expertise of Fortune 500 hiring professionals and recruiters, The Web 2.0 Job Finder will show you:

How to create, develop, and maintain an online presence and brand.

How to adopt best practices for getting a job by writing skill-specific resumes, targeting jobs that match your skills and anticipating what a company needs.

How both companies and job seekers are staying ahead of the curve in a challenging job market, with special insights from top executives at Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and many other notable employers.

How to make your social network work for you and not against you (hint: avoid beer-swilling photos on Facebook).

About this title

About the Author:

Brenda Greene is a former editor at Working Woman and the author of the recently revised Get the Interview Every Time: Proven Resume and Cover Letter Strategies from Fortune 500 Hiring Professionals. She coauthored The Business Style Handbook and America's Girl, a biography of Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel. It recently won the International Swimming Hall of Fame Buck Dawson award. Brenda recently moved to Enfield, North Carolina.

Coleen Byrne is a veteran Internet executive with more than 15 years' experience working for Internet giants, including: Yahoo!, CNET (a division of CBS), IGN (a division of News Corp) and Excite@Home. She has both international and domestic experience in Internet advertising, marketing, and business development. She also held public relations positions at Lucas Films and Louis Paul & Partners. Coleen lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband and two sons.

Review:

The result of interviews with Fortune 500 hiring professionals, this book provides advice and information on maintaining an online presence and personal brand; finding jobs that match your skills; staying ahead of emerging technology and social media innovations; and maximizing the job-finding potential of your online social networks.

One thing this book had going for it was that it was a relatively smooth read.  Although it was dense and verbose, it didn’t take longer than it needed to on any one point, and the information flowed logically.  As it happens, I found a job while reading this book (more on this in a future blog), but I still felt compelled to finish reading this one, if only to write this review.

The second plus was that the book genuinely had new (at least to me) and useful information on the other side of the hiring wall, which is what I think most job seekers are looking for in a self-help book.  The fact that the authors were able to present direct quotes from the people who hire for Fortune 500 positions, as opposed to recruiters or “career professionals,” lends this book a degree of credibility.  These quotes confirmed some things I had always thought, such as the fact that being a friend, or friend of a friend, is a factor in hiring decisions.  Another revealed a practice in Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) that I found ridiculous.  Their system asks if the applicant has experience with Excel, yes or no.  Of course, anyone who’s ever opened Excel on a friend’s computer once, by accident, is going to say yes.  A far better question would be, “Write a formula to do such and such.”  Still others pointed out that while online reputation is important, hiring authorities will generally not act on the information without vetting it.

The book also included some good nuggets on current recruiting technology.  For example, I had always assumed that PDF was the best way to submit a resume in every situation.  Reading this book, I learned that many ATS sites have trouble parsing keywords in PDF files.  As we job-seekers know, keywords will make or break an online application.  Word documents saved with compatibility are the better option, apparently.

What this book lacked was depth in the area of methodology.  It provides limited how-to information on completing specific tasks.  I also felt it dwelt a little to long on the resume, considering the topic was Web 2.0.

Still, the book provides lots of food for thought, along with some inspiration (it got me to start a Twitter account).  Overall, a worthwhile read.  -- JP Brown

About this edition

• Publisher: Weiser
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1601631588
• ISBN 13: 9781601631589
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224