The Essential Trio

There are 3 essential social networks that you MUST be on if you are on the hunt for a job. One for business information, another because its packed with personal information, and one for very relevant, up to date info. As you uncover names and leads you can usually find just about all of them on one of these 3 sites.

*LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) - Social network for business professionals.

- Connect with all of your email contacts, co-workers, ex co-workers and classmates. LinkedIn allows you to display your skill set / work history / and interests for other professionals to view (several of which being recruiters.)

- Search by zip code, city, or state to find certain types of people, or companies within an industry.

*Facebook (www.facebook.com) - Popular social network for the younger crowd.

- Connect to all the same people as LinkedIn, except now you get to see things like their birthday, religion, favorite books, bands, movies, quotes, etc.

- Use the "Profile Search" to look at different companies in your network and find contacts to call regarding a job.

- Check out http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics to see some interesting facts about Facebook.

*Twitter (www.twitter.com) Most popular & most valuable.

- Twitter is "Micro blogging" so basically you find people you either know or want to know and "follow" them. After you begin following them you will start receiving updates like "@JIM IS AT THE WEB CONFERENCE DOWNTOWN CHICAGO" or a lot of times people will post links.

- For you job seekers, Many companies use Twitter for branding and to build a sense of closeness with their customers or client base. I've noticed that several people within companies who are involved in the staffing process will post about job openings and the types of people they are looking for like "@JOE LOOKING FOR JAVA DEVELOPERS FOR CHICAGO OFFICE" you can then click on Joe's profile and In most cases find out his name or get a link to his website.

- So how do you look through all of the Twitter updates and find jobs? I've found a site called www.monitter.com and it monitors every update from every twitter user. It lets you filter the updates by entering a zip code and selecting a mile radius to search within. You then can select 3 keywords and if anyone within in your radius writes on Twitter or (tweets) your keyword, it shows up on your screen. For example, If you're a .NET guy with a lot of back end and SQL experience. You could set up the three columns ".NET" "Back end" "SQL" -- Now anyone within lets say 40 miles of "60606" who writes anything about those 3 things you will see it
immediately as it happens.

Be Proactive

I have put together some links as well as advice for being proactive in your job search. The links vary from job board search engines, to Chicago related tech news and event sites, and also networking resources for finding the events here in Chicago.

Indeed (www.indeed.com) - Indeed grabs job postings from several job boards and allows you to search them all at the same time. * A great tool for job seekers to use on Indeed is the
"employer/recruiter" filter. By selecting employer you are then just looking at companies that are directly posting the jobs and not using a 3rd party. You can then go deeper searching by date to see the most recent job postings which are yet to be bombarded by dozens of job seekers.

Chicago Tech News (www.chicagotechnews.com) - Todd Allen has put together a great site tracking Chicago's Tech Community.

Chicago Business (www.chicagobusiness.com) - A great source for Chicago business news.

The May Report (www.themayreport.com) - An Inside look at Chicago's Tech Community.

Chicago Tech Report (www.chicagotechreport.com) - Another great source for tech news here in Chicago.

TechCocktail (www.techcocktail.com) - a MUST ATTEND event for any Chicagoans interested in technology!

Windybits (www.windybits.com) - Windybits Rocks! People from all over submit the "WHAT/WHERE/WHEN" for all of the Chicago tech events. (5-15 every day) *Attending the events found on WindyBits gives you a great edge on getting a job. It allows you to be in the same room as several hiring managers from all sorts of companies.

Some advice if you're applying - Don't just submit your resume like every other John Doe. Go on LinkedIn/Facebook and try to find out who over sees the development staff @ XYZ. Then get around 3 names and try to track their emails, allowing you to write them personalized custom emails. Research the company you are applying to, try to get a good understanding of the culture there and also what kind of goals they are striving towards as an organization. You need to be in tune with where a company is going-then describe how you can help get them there. This is something few candidates are doing, and it will provide you with an advantage over everyone who merely submitted a resume. You should separate from that crowd and show not only that you're valuable, but also that you're proactive- Be a hunter not a farmer.

BE PROACTIVE AND LEVERAGE YOUR NETWORK!
We really need to come together and work to help one another! Stop relying on job boards and wasting time with recruiters who think .NET is the ending of a URL.