LinkedIn and Twitter Lab
- 1. LinkedIn and Twitter Lab at #asml11 Helen Buzdugan University of Manchester 26 January 2011
- 2. Objectives • Ways of using LinkedIn and Twitter with students – helping you to help them! • Some ideas from me and hands-on practice • Sharing our ideas, experiences and tips as we go along • Time for questions! But won’t be covering… Careers Service’s ‘corporate’ social media accounts Facebook
- 3. Where are you on the social media novice to guru scale? A) I wouldn’t know a tweet from a twit! B) I know a bit about Twitter and LinkedIn but haven’t really used them much C) I’ve joined fairly recently and created my profiles and started to try a few things D) I’ve been using these for a while now and am pretty competent, but feel I could always learn more E) My colleagues call me the Careers Service’s “social media guru”!
- 4. How can social media help us in our work? Can we map different web tools and social media against career development learning tasks?
- 5. Career Development Learning Tasks SELF OPPORTUNITIES DOTS Model 5 CDL Tasks 1. Improving self-awareness Tony Watts & Bill Law DECISIONS (skills, interests, values, motivations etc) 2. Researching opportunities (types of work) 3. Making career decisions 4. Finding opportunities (e.g. job TRANSITIONS search) 5. Application process (CVs, (APPLICATIONS) interviews etc)
- 6. Self Researching Career Finding Application awareness opportunities decisions opportunities process Guidance interview ● ● ● ● ● Careers Website ○ ● ○ ● ● RSS feeds ○ ● ○ LinkedIn ● ○ ○ ○ Forum ○ ● ○ ○ ● Facebook ○ ○ ○ Twitter ○ ● ○ Blog ○ ● ○ ○ ● YouTube video or ○ ● ○ ○ ● podcast Social bookmarking ○ ● ○ ● ○
- 7. How I use social media LABOUR MARKET POLL SHARE GOOD INTELLIGENCE PEOPLE’S PRACTICE VIEWS GET FIND OUT WHAT ENGAGE LATEST NEWS, OTHER CAREERS EVENTS & WITH SERVICES ARE DOING! OPPORTUNITIES ISSUES MAKE GET ANSWERS FORM AND JOIN USEFUL TO BURNING COMMUNITIES CONTACTS QUESTIONS
- 8. Latest news, events and opportunities - Twitter • Competition to win a paid fashion internship at Elle • Opportunity to win 4 shows as presenter on the Hits radio station • Live Q&A on Twitter on ‘The Future of Charities’ with the CEO of the RNID • Article about the future of careers services in the Times Higher Ed
- 9. Sharing good practice • Discussion threads in the LinkedIn ‘UK HE Careers Professionals’ group about instant messaging guidance, social media, dealing with students’ expectations Polling people’s views • Asked my local media contacts on Twitter ‘What do you think of unpaid internships?’ • Set up Twitpoll to see what smartphones students use
- 10. Labour market intelligence - LinkedIn • Find out what types of organisations employ people from a computational linguistics background • Research career trajectories – how do people get into a CSR role • Coming soon… viewing your graduates’ 1st & 2nd destinations – ‘Career Explorer’ tool
- 11. Get answers to burning questions • “Do you use case studies as part of your graduate selection process?” Question to AGR LinkedIn group Make useful contacts • Within one hour, managed to find two local professionals for an employer panel for Politics students via Twitter
- 13. LinkedIn – ‘Facebook for Professionals’ • 90+ million members in 200 countries • 5+ million in UK • A new member joins every second • BUT only 9% of University of Manchester students/grads use LinkedIn frequently or sometimes, compared with 94% for Facebook (Survey of 747 students/grads, 2010)
- 14. Twitter • 106 million users worldwide (but not all are regular, active users) • 50% of users are 18-34 (so students and graduates are a key group) • BUT Only 18% of University of Manchester students and grads used Twitter ‘frequently’ or ‘sometimes’ (March 2010)
- 15. Two ways of looking at these stats 1. “Hardly any students use Twitter or LinkedIn so there isn’t much point us engaging with this yet.” 2. “Twitter and LinkedIn are really valuable tools for students’ job hunting and networking, plus having a strong, professional online presence is increasingly important, so let’s see how we can encourage more to engage.”
- 16. Some ways I use LinkedIn with students • Exploring job roles – what job titles are there in x and what organisations do people in x work for • Researching career trajectories to see how people get into a desired role • Identifying organisations to target (by sector or location) • Researching organisations – e.g. what sort of people do they employ, where do they have offices • Identifying contacts to target for ‘informational meetings’ or work experience • Developing contacts for working overseas • Unlimited potential…
- 17. 6 of my favourite things about LinkedIn 1. You can see who your 2nd and 3rd degree contacts are 2. You don’t have to already know people to start building your network on LinkedIn 3. You can keep in touch with people even when they change jobs (or we can keep in touch with students after guidance appointments and see what they do when they graduate…) 4. There’s no blurring of personal and professional – it’s ALL professional 5. You can dip in and out of it as you need to (but the more you put in, the more you get out) 6. Is it 6 degrees of separation, or just 3…?
- 18. Scenario 1 – Identifying organisations Scenario A student wants to get some publishing work experience back home in Brighton over the summer and wants help with identifying publishers to target. They’ve tried the usual Google search but not got too far. LinkedIn task Do an advanced company search, using the Brighton postcode BN1 2RE and sector ‘Publishing’. What would you then suggest students do with this list?
- 19. Scenario 2 – Researching organisations Scenario A student has an interview with an organisation called Armstrong Learning, and wants to find out more about them. LinkedIn task Do a basic company search for ‘Armstrong Learning’. Look especially at ‘insightful statistics’ and profiles of employees. How could you/students use this data? Experiment with searching for other companies. Can you find any big graduate recruiters?
- 20. Scenario 3 – Identify contacts Scenario A student is considering a career in football coaching. You suggest identifying some contacts in your area for ‘informational interviews’ initially. LinkedIn task Do an advanced people search using the keyword ‘football coach’ and select the sector ‘Sports’. Look at the available profiles and see if you can identify any suitable contacts. NB: If you can only see job titles in your search results, look for relevant sector groups to join first, to give you access to people’s full profiles. TIP: Try joining ‘UK Sports’ and/or ‘UK Sports Network’, as you don’t have to wait for approval to join these groups
- 21. Scenario 4 – Researching an area of work and career paths Scenario A student is interesting in doing something to do with equality and diversity but doesn’t know what roles exist and what organisations might employ such people. LinkedIn task Do a people search using just the keywords ‘equality and diversity’ and perhaps location ‘UK’ to find UK specific jobs. Look at people’s profiles. What different jobs have they done? Who did they work for? What did they study etc? NB: Again, you might need to join a relevant group to view full job profiles here, but otherwise just look at their basic profile to get an idea.
- 22. Joining LinkedIn groups • Joining groups is essential for students to expand their network of contacts • Can automatically view most profiles of (and send message to) people in same group Tips: • Useful to join groups to show students on your profile • See if groups are UK specific • Look for high membership groups • Change your settings for the group to ‘weekly digest’ or de-select the Digest email box
- 23. Most common questions from students • What can I put in my LinkedIn profile as I’m ‘only a student’? • How can I make contacts on LinkedIn?
- 24. Get started with LinkedIn • Complete your own profile as fully as possible • Join some relevant groups (can join up to 50) • Join in some group discussions • Find some of your own students or recent graduates on LinkedIn as examples • In my experience, students need to be shown how to search LinkedIn for contacts, organisations etc (so it helps to be familiar with it first)
- 25. How students can contact people via LinkedIn • Check if the person has a Twitter profile (if so, consider making contact via Twitter first) • Check their contact settings for ‘expertise requests’ • Usual networking rules apply! • Approach more junior people first, not CEOs • Ask for advice initially; perhaps an ‘informational interview’ – can lead to work experience and perhaps even a job • There is a word limit for messages to anyone who is not a direct contact (e.g. group contact) – a short paragraph • Also consider starting discussion in a relevant group
- 26. LinkedIn – useful groups to join Types of groups include: • Careers professionals groups • Graduate recruiter/business groups • Local/regional networking groups • University alumni groups • Sector specific groups • Company alumni groups
- 27. LinkedIn – useful links • Refer students and graduates to: http://grads.linkedin.com (5 useful short ‘getting started’ videos) • Example student profile to show: www.linkedin.com/in/samuelroutledge
- 28. Twitter – the basics and a bit more… • Tweeting (use a link shortener like http://tinyurl.com to shorten long web links) • Searching • Following people • Lists – try following www.twitter.com/helenbuz/lists/careers-people or www.twitter.com/helenbuz/lists/careers-services • Retweets (RT) • Using hashtags (#) e.g. #asml11 • Replies (@) and direct messages (DM) • Directories • Polls – see http://twtpoll.com/udj5hz • Hootsuite
- 29. Twitter scenario A student is interested in getting into magazine publishing and she is keen to get some work experience and find out more about opportunities. In what ways could she use Twitter to help her?
- 30. Suggestions – part 1 • Follow people and organisations that tweet publishing jobs using the Twitter search function for keywords or by a #, Twitter directories (e.g. www.twellow.com and following other people’s lists. • You can help your students by setting up lists for different sectors and encouraging students to follow them. E.g. www.twitter.com/helenbuz/publishing- careers
- 31. Suggestions – part 2 • Follow people working in publishing. Observe them for a while and see what sorts of things they tweet about. • Retweet interesting things and comment on the industry news – try to sound like a “professional in development”. • As you start to build up a following join in conversations. • If you have a blog, link to that and your LinkedIn profile, and feed your blog posts onto Twitter so that people following you on Twitter can see examples of your ideas and your writing.
- 32. *NEW* Fusing social networking and job search • The job search engine Simply Hired (www.simplyhired.co.uk) connects with your Facebook or LinkedIn contacts to show you if you have any contacts (even 2nd or 3rd degree) in organisations advertising vacancies
- 33. Opportunities and Threats Opportunities Threats • Instant information on • Information overload anything • Communication with • 24/7 ‘always on’ culture anyone anywhere and erosion of privacy • Everyone can be a • No quality control publisher – hard to assess validity • More things possible • Pace of technological every day advance can overwhelm
- 34. Contact Helen Buzdugan Careers Consultant, with special responsibility for web and interactive technologies) MLP, Careers & Employability Division University of Manchester, UK • Email: helen.buzdugan@manchester.ac.uk • Phone: +44 161 275 2828 (careers switchboard) • LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/helenbuzdugan • Twitter: www.twitter.com/helenbuz • Slides available at: www.slideshare.com/helenpownall