You've probably heard many times over by now that you must carefully manage your online personality because employers are watching. That photo of you playing Beer Pong at a friend's party, for instance, might send the wrong message to the future boss who interviewed you yesterday.
But up to now, most of the things you could do with Facebook - by far the most popular social networking site - were reactive in nature, like untagging yourself when a friend posts a potentially embarrassing photo. A recently developed application for Facebook now gives you the power to turn the site into a valuable part of your active job search.
It's called BranchOut, and it could change the way you use Facebook. This YouTube video gives you an idea of how it works.
So why would you use a career networking app for Facebook when you're already LinkedIn? (You are LinkedIn, aren't you?) As Jolie O'Dell points out in this Mashable post, a career networking tool that meshes with your social network on Facebook "taps into very real and vibrant connections within a social graph, not just the sometimes stale professional Rolodex stored in a LinkedIn profile."
A recent experience I had illustrates the difference between the ways people interact with others on Facebook and the ways they interact on LinkedIn. A social acquaintance of mine works at a financial-services company in the area that had posted an opening for a position in my field. As we see each other regularly, I mentioned the opening to him and said I would send him the requisition number. I looked up the position and sent it to him via a LinkedIn message, as both of us are connected there. The following week, I asked if he had gotten my message; he said he had not, but would check. A few days later, however, he pointed out to me that he knew me online in part because I had connected with his partner on Facebook, but had yet to friend him, and was wondering when I was going to get around to doing this.
It’s pretty clear that, even with the thousands of affinity and professional groups and discussions on LinkedIn, people tend not to consider the connections they have there as close or personal as the ones they have on Facebook. And since it’s Facebook’s social character that draws people to it, it would seem only natural that people might be able to make better use of their social connections there for professional advancement than they would their LinkedIn connections. BranchOut gives them – and you – the opportunity to do that.
If you’ve used BranchOut to leverage your Facebook network professionally, I’d love to hear about your experiences.
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