The job market is fierce. The competition is plentiful and the opportunities are few. When looking for a job there are the usual avenues to explore, Craigslist, Monster.com, the local newspaper, etc., and you may even have success with any or all of these options. They didn’t work for me, however.
After being out of work for almost two months, and spending entire days online scouring the websites listed above only to be either beat to the door by someone else, ignored or rejected I decided I had to find another avenue to go down. I knew that I needed to find some contacts in my field of web design, since I had already exhausted the ones I had. You can only email and call people so many times before they start to get annoyed.
With everyone turning to social media to stay in touch it seemed like as good a place as any to put the word out that I was looking for work and to do some fancy networking as well. I started with my Facebook account, hoping that between all my 261 “friends” someone would see my desperate cry for employment and either hire me or pass my name on to someone that would. While I did have some friends take notice of my dilemma on Facebook the advice that ultimately landed me a job was to make use of Linked In.
Linked In is the ultimate in networking. I signed on and entered the most detailed profile I could, and then uploaded my address book and got to work. I was amazed by the connections I found through people I already knew. It turns out that the reason I didn’t have any success through the people I had already approached was that it was someone in my outer circle that had the connection I needed and was able to introduce me to my new employer.
If you are looking for work, I highly recommend looking towards social media and developing your own network. Not only is it easy, it’s fast. I found a job through Linked in within 48 hours after wasting months looking the conventional way.