We’ve found Robert Scoble’s recent post on how to social network when you’re laid off very relevant to our discussion regarding the future of work, and the emerging culture of perma-freelancing. The prolific blogger lays out 19 rock solid points of advice for anyone looking for work in this networked age. He emphasizes the need to focus all your online activities towards being the person who’s qualified for the job you’re looking for. This means maintaining a web presence with solid material based around your field – as he says: if you’re a plumber, post information about plumbing. He also recommends curtailing excessive messing around (no posting LOLCats all day, and no drunk photos on Facebook.) With big brother Google indexing everything that passes through the internet, you need to maintain your reputation on all fronts. Scoble’s advice is worth studying (and using) for both those actively looking for work, and anyone who wants to maintain a professional presence online.
Scoble’s first 5 tips:
1. Your blog is your resume. You need one and it needs to have 100 posts on it about what you want to be known for.
2. Remove all LOLCats from your blog.
3. Remove all friends from your facebook and twitter accounts that will embarrass you. We do look. If we see photos of people getting drunk with you that is a bad sign. Get rid of them. They will NOT help you get a job.
4. Demonstrate you are “clued in.” This means removing ANYTHING that says you are a “social media expert” from your Twitter account. There is no such thing and even if there were there’s no job in it for you. Chris Brogan already has that job and he’s not giving it up.
5. Demonstrate you have kids and hobbies, but they should be 1% of your public persona, not 99%. Look at my blog here. You’ll see my son’s photo on Flickr once in a while. But mostly I talk about the tech industry, cause that’s the job I want to have: talking to geeks and innovators.
Scobleizer: “If you are laid off, here’s how to socially network”
[image: SOCIALisBETTER]
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This is also incredibly good advice for students looking for their first real job. They’re the ones mroe likely to have more of an immature/party persona on the internet.
January 16th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
This article may be true advice, and Robert Scoble is unquestionably a respectable source on the topic, but isn’t this typecasting the internet persona?
I may be that college kid holding on too long to the immaturity that the undergrad life allows. But “professionally censoring” an online presence, on places like Facebook-which are for friends, not business partners-is defeating the purpose of these social networks. It’s obvious that LinkedIn isn’t meant for tagging keg stands, and Twitter falls somewhere in between (it doesn’t seem inappropriate to announce a meet-up in a bar. right?) But isn’t demanding that everyone pretend they don’t mess around just a big sham?
January 16th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Something else along the vein of the future of jobs: http://www.WhoYouNotice.com
a site that uses questions based in positive psychology to help you find work that will likely give you meaning, or at least be really fitting.
It’s still in its infancy, but you might be interested.
January 18th, 2009 at 8:12 am
“Remove all friends from your facebook and twitter accounts that will embarrass you” — what a depressing state of affairs
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:10 pm
stop being a creeper mccreeperson
January 25th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
I think this is a very interesting post. I also read other 14 tips in Scoble’s original post. Under extraordinary circumstances; yes, you may need to do these tips. I mean if you laid off and would like to find a new job asap, you can consider these advises; thus your online persona helps you to find a job. In other words, these tips symbolize to use your online persona as a tool for finding a job. If your current agenda is to find a job, that is understandable; but afterwards? Your online persona is absolutely understood as you. Therefore, you should decide on which information can be shared. As Scoble indicates in the bottom of his original post as an update, these rules (he says rules) can be broken but after thinking carefully. Which rules can be broken will identify your personality, that is why your online persona will be seen as you.
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:33 am