When you are continuing on the same career path, it is easy for your social media profile to match your future aspirations. For example, if you are a student majoring in communications looking for a PR assistant spot, your profile showing your communications courses fits perfectly with your target jobs. But what if you are a music major who decides to move into PR?
It gets more complicated as you add more years, experience, and skills to your life and career. If you spent five years as a professional musician and now want to pursue PR, your profile facts alone won’t project your intent.
In the first chapter, we talked briefly about job search and career change. Social media is particularly helpful to refine and change your brand over time. While you can’t change your major or the jobs you have held that might paint one type of picture, you can add information about new courses, new projects (even volunteer), and new skills that will add a new dimension to your profile. You can specifically target new groups and new people with whom to interact. You can blog about your new career target or comment on other people’s blogs that relate to the new target, thereby shifting the balance from your former profile to this newer blended profile that includes the new target.
It’s tricky if you are currently employed and this career transition is a secret. If you are still active in your first career, adding the new information dilutes the former, so this is tricky to balance as well. The tradeoff between old and new information and how you project your brand overall will vary on a case-by-case basis, but you should consider the preceding issues as you decide what’s best for you.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Social media is not about setting up a profile just one time. You need to update it as your skills and experience change and connect with people as your network grows and changes in order to get the most out of social media.
- You can keep separate profiles to separate professional and personal networks and information, but this is not 100 percent guaranteed. You can also just assume that all of your information is going to be viewable by prospective employers and be extra vigilant about posting personal information.
- Even if you maintain your social media profile actively, over time it will need to change, sometimes drastically (e.g., for a career change to a new industry or function).
- By updating your profiles with new information and being active on your or others’ blogs relating to your new career, you can change your online profile.
EXERCISES
- How will you remember to update your profile? Will you set up reminders in your calendar? Will you designate a specific time of day or day of the week to update your status and connect with others online?
- How will you manage your social media activity so that you take advantage of the connections, but keep it from overrunning your other activities? Think about setting a time limit on social media activity per day or per week, if you spend too much time on it and neglect the rest of your search.
- What is your current online brand? Ask your friends and family to give you feedback on your profile. Do you like what you hear, or do you need to change or refine some things? Make an action list with a specific timetable for how you will make the changes.
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