One example of using Social networks to land a job

Social networking has gotten a lot of buzz in the recruitment marketing space over the last year…and for good reason. As this example shows below, social networks are allowing both recruiters to find the right candidates as well as enabling candidates to find the right influential people to connect with. These tools are dramatically changing how companies should be thinking about and  implementing their recruitment marketing strategies. I’m sure there are countless other stories like this occurring everyday, but notice how this one candidate was able to connect to the right people because the company was engaged with social networks.

Connecting with executives can be done through traditional networking or through social networking.  For me, I ended up using both methods and saw incredibly fast results.

While doing my job search, I found a company that I was interested in. To start my search, I did what I’ve always done before…I looked at their website to see who had invested in the company.  As I looked at there, I saw that I knew one of the investors.  So, I wrote an e-mail, attached my CV, and asked the VC to please forward it to the CEO.  20 minutes later the VC connected me with the CEO and we are exchanging e-mails to setup a time to meet.

After I sent my initial e-mail to the VC, I continued to look at this company’s website and saw that one of the founders and CTO was on twitter. I started “following” him.  Also, I found something interesting that he had written and I tweeted (I hate this term) it.  Two minutes after I sent out my tweet the CTO started “following” me and we exchanged some tweets one on one.  The CTO knew nothing of my discussions with the CEO, but we were still communicating.

Because of the club I attend, friends, and business contacts, I have been introduced to many Boston based VC’s and have built up a very strong network as a result.  Now, social networking has opened up a whole new way to gain access to influential people within the high tech community.  I do encourage everyone, if you have not already done so, to sign up for Twitter (www.twitter.com) and then download Tweetdeck (www.tweetdeck.com)  to help you manage it.