Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were originally meant to serve as places where people could meet, become friends and share their interests and aspirations, but in more recent years they have become places to find out where the jobs are and how to obtain them—and LinkedIn is particularly useful for that purpose. Social media, in short, has become a new way for job seekers and recruiters to connect with one another. (This also means that people should be careful about what they say on these pages, as potential employees might see them.)

The impact that social media has had on this area of life have gone far beyond expanding the areas in which work can be found. It has also, in a sense, reversed the very process of recruiting itself: instead of the job candidate writing out his resume and mailing copies of it to various companies in the hopes that one of them will be impressed by it and decide to hire him, we now have that person posting his resume online so that anyone who is currently hiring can read it and ask for an interview. This article will tell how to create a social media resume that will appeal to almost anyone who takes the time to read it.

The basics

A social media resume starts out with at least one of two things: a website and a blog. If you choose a website, you will look more professional if you purchase your own domain name—or in the case of sites like Bluehost and Godaddy, register it for free—rather than use a company that provides free websites. The domain name should be your own name, either alone or followed by the word “resume.” Once registered, your URL should be included on all paper versions of your resume, as well as on your social media page and anything that you use to market yourself, such as your business card and advertisements.

Your site should have a different tab for each section, so that (unlike with a paper resume) recruiters do not have to look through the entire document in order to find what they are looking for. This feature is particularly valuable because some of your skills will be valuable to some recruiters but not others, so you will want to have a different version of your online resume for each job that you might be qualified for.

Another advantage that online resumes have over their paper counterparts is that you can include audio and video elements to enhance your company image and make you stand out even more among the crowd of candidates who also want the job.

More about things to include

Your social media resume should include such info as what your “social media forte” is, whether it be video or community management or strategic social positioning. Such specificity creates the focus that recruiters look for. Connect all your social media pages together to create an active online presence for yourself.