Article by: JD Harvill
APICS Atlanta Career Center Administrator
Article to appear in the March 2008 APICS Atlanta Newsletter

I read recently that 75% of Americans are interested in a new job opportunity. Here is an article for those of you who are not actively seeking new opportunities, but still desire to be visible to the hiring officials and recruiters who might just need to find you when that next great opportunity comes across their desk.

Professional Networking to Increase your Internet Presence

Today, you can take advantage of several new tools to increase your visibility to professional colleagues and recruiters alike. These new “professional networking” sites allow you to create a profile of yourself including job title, educational level, and even skill or certification keywords if you craft your profile as carefully as you craft your resumé.

Increasing your visibility on professional sites gives you more control over what will be found in broader searches done by both recruiters and web spiders looking for professionals like yourself.

LinkedIn, my favorite of these “networking” sites, allows people to search your professional identity, but they cannot contact you directly except with your permission. They can explain how they know you, or what they are looking for, but you have control over whether they will ever get into your “network”. This allows you to keep your network as broad and open as you’d like, or as tight and controlled as you need to.

With LinkedIn specifically, you can make yourself extremely appealing to both colleagues and recruiters, by strengthening your profile with strong quantified descriptions of your work, well placed keywords, and by asking your coworkers and colleagues to write appropriate recommendations for you which are directly attached to your LinkedIn profile to bring it to life.

Other sites like TheLadders, Spoke, and FastPitch each have their focus and bring specific visibility to your professional profile. If you do a good job of getting your primary keywords into these sites you are well on your way to increasing your overall “Internet Presence”.

Use these tools carefully to network with colleagues and fellow professionals, and you will also become more visible to those important individuals in your industry or region.

Job Board Profiles are important if you are an “active” job seeker

Keep your profile and resume updated weekly on Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs, and both industry and region specific job boards if you are an “active” job seeker less concerned about confidentiality.

When applying directly to jobs on the job boards be sure to add appropriate keywords from the companies job description into both your profile and your cover letter to create the best possible chance of getting through the screening process.

Beware of Negatives in your Internet Presence

Many recruiters and hiring officials may use internet search tools to get more information on candidates they might already be considering as well.

You must make sure that your “Internet Presence” is as flattering as possible.

Do several searches (on Google, Yahoo, Lycos, Ask, and any other tools you find) for your own name, as well as your primary email address, and analyze the results.

• Do these searches find you, or some famous person with your name? It’s best if they find you or someone respectable at the very least.
• Do they find the photos you shared with family and friends last summer? Again, if the pictures are great and show a healthy lifestyle its all good.
• Do they find the tax records on your rental property? Or litigation records from some personal or business trouble?
• Or, do they find that chat room you haven’t visited in eight years because your spouse became suspicious?

More often than not they will find little or nothing, but its certainly better for you to control what they find, than for you to get blacklisted for things you may not even have been aware were out there.

Now do similar searches by your job title, location, and/or industry. Do your new professional profiles come up? Don’t expect overnight results, but make updates to these sites regularly and you might just find yourself moving to the top of some important searches.

JD Harvill, recruiter with Professional Search of Atlanta can be contacted at
770-952-0009, jdharvill@professionalsearchatlanta.com, or visit professionalsearchatlanta.com