My experiences with networking & social media … in the last 3 days!
I went through my resume and checked to see if anybody I worked with anywhere was on LinkedIn. Two people (both senior to me) from my tech days at [Big Time University] were, and they not only accepted my connections but immediately sent notes asking what I was up to, etc. (I wish I had done this *before* applying to work at the same company!).
I also looked up the companies I applied to or am applying to to see if I had connections. Turns out a friend from high school’s younger sister was at [Cool Company] for years; he and I are Facebook friends, so messaged him and asked him to put me in touch with his sister, and he said he would.
I found someone else through joining alumni groups at LinkedIn–my high school and college groups. I also discovered that my cousin turns out to have a couple friends from college at [Big Name Company], so I asked him if he would put us in touch.
Facebook has been really useful too. I learned from LinkedIn that a high school friend (my junior prom date, actually) has a job doing what I want to do. I sent him an email (and I got his email from being Facebook friends).
Another high school Facebook friend has been enormously generous. I had messaged him re: selling bike shoes & mentioned I was looking for work. He’s a director of [Doing Nifty Things], which is another way in to the kind of stuff I’m interested in. He immediately offered to do whatever he could – and has been unbelievably helpful – brainstorming ways I could come up with ways that would be valuable to hirers and offering strategies & reading my resume!
By the way – I heard back from my advisor and he’s putting me in touch with [So-and-So].
I also tried a cold email last week to [Wowza Company] in [my city] re: an info interview. The guy I emailed sent my address on to someone else who transitioned from a doctoral program to [that sector] – and he wrote me the friendliest email ever offering to chat about his experiences.
I’m also curious about what others are doing for money during the career search. I started a mini-business doing cleaning, errands, organization. But I’m curious about whether people have creative one-shot stuff.
Job hunting software: Brazen Careerist also has some comments about various software programs for job hunts – I’m following up on your suggestions to put something like this in place to track contacts.
This is fun! And, overall, people have been *enormously* responsive. The *only* thing I’ve sent out and not gotten a response on was a cold email to a radio producer at the local NPR station. But people have been SO generous and happy to talk.
How have you been using social media, dear readers? Do you have a LinkedIn profile yet? How have you leveraged Facebook? Are you networking with your fellow post-academics at the Leaving Academia Ning site? Are you following me on Twitter (sabinehikel)?
(P.S.: I like my social media to be very compartmentalized, so I only use Facebook for in-the-flesh friends and connections and LinkedIn for people I’ve worked with or am angling to work with, so if I turn down your request to connect, know that it is not at all personal. It’s just, as the kids say, how I roll).
Here’s another use of effective marketing on Twitter: someone called @AcademeJobs started following my tweets (@sabinehikel). I checked out theirs. There’s some good stuff there–not job postings, exactly, but links to articles on the politics of higher education. Then I clicked on the home page for this tweeter, and it turns out to be Academe Jobs, a site I’ve never heard of before (have you?). I’m not endorsing the site, but I am letting you know that it exists, because I know there is a segment of my readership that hasn’t yet given up on the academic job search. It appears as though there are listing for both the US and Canada, as well as for faculty, admin and “executive jobs” (what the heck is that in the context of a university?).
