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Connecting with Employers via Social Media

Social media offers a non-traditional way to get to know the employer before and after making the initial approach. It is also an alternate way of engaging and communicating with them.

Choose the social media tools that suit you and the employers you want to target best. If the employer you are researching has a Facebook profile, ‘like' them, if they are on Twitter, ‘follow' them. LinkedIn is also an excellent way of locating employees of an organisation, and of finding diversity managers in your local area.

Social media lets you understand more about the organisation's ‘personality' and their workplace culture, and it also means that you have up to date information about what they are doing. It can be a great way to find a strong conversation starter when making your initial approach.


Facebook

Facebook is a popular social networking tool, with over 10 million active users in Australia. Facebook pages allow organisations to create a branded page, and communicate with Facebook users and other organisations that 'like' their page.

Two organisations can communicate on Facebook by sharing, commenting and liking content on each other's pages.

Facebook is an informal and visual way of interacting with employers, of understanding the workplace's culture, and of building your profile in the community.

www.facebook.com


Twitter

Twitter is a popular micro-blogging site, allowing short posts of 140 characters – this can include URLs, photos and hashtags. When you ‘follow' an organisation or an individual, you receive their posts in your newsfeed. When another organisation or individual follows you, they receive your updates.

Including a commonly used hashtag in your post allows your post to be grouped with other posts using the same hashtag, and is therefore easier for other users to find. For example, the #deau is a way of collating disability employment posts in Australia. You can also tag other users in posts - thereby starting a public conversation with or about them.

Twitter allows for the instant communication of information. If local employers are using twitter, this is an effective way to connect with them and stay up to date.

www.twitter.com


LinkedIn

LinkedIn can be described as Facebook for your professional life. It is an effective networking tool for the employer liaison function of DES, and for job searching.

LinkedIn profiles are searchable, and allow you to locate strategic entry points to organisations you are researching – such as a diversity manager.

Searching for a company on LinkedIn also gives you an idea of the types of roles, and the types of people that work for that organisation. It can be another useful way of understanding workplace culture before or after making your initial approach.

www.linkedin.com