Can Positioning Yourself as an Expert Help You Land a Job?
Well, the short answer is yes.
When it comes time to look for a new job, you should absolutely take advantage of opportunities to position yourself as an expert in your field. Here’s some steps to help that happen:
- Make sure your social presence is shiny. You should be doing that when you job hunt anyway. Checking out your social properties is done on a regular basis these days, so you need to make sure that your online presence is either great, or locked down where it can’t be found. You should go for great. The internet is forever, and even photos posted to private accounts on Instagram may not stay private. If you’re looking for a high profile job, chances are, someone is going to be paid to find your dirt. Make sure you don’t have any.
- Make sure your social presence is relevant. If all you ever post to Twitter are pictures of your adorable cat, you might consider adding a “professional” account. Make sure that your perfect job description is part of your profile description (“I work in private industry insuring that customer satisfaction is optimal” or “I’m a wildland firefighter with fifteen years’ experience fighting fires in CA, NV, and CO, currently teaching introductory classes at a Colorado fire academy”). Then make your posts relevant to the field that you work in. I don’t post pictures of my cats on my work Twitter account. I keep it professional, with a side of humor. I warn people that I post pictures of my cats on my Instagram account, so that they understand that the posts there are a little more personal. My Facebook accountis a mix of personal and professional, but my Facebook page is strictly professional.
- Start blogging. If you don’t want to go through the whole process that is setting up a WordPress site (really, it doesn’t take that long to set up a free site through wordpress.com), you can posts blogs to LinkedIn Pulse. Headhunters and recruiting managers are going to be looking at your LinkedIn profile anyway, so you might as well make sure that you’re posting there. Hire either a copywriter or editor to make sure that your posts sound as professional and polished as you mean them to. Be sure to use your clean and shiny social media profiles to share links to your blog posts.
- If it’s going to help you land a dream job, consider writing a book. A prime target is Amazon’s Short Reads section, where all the books can be read in under two hours. While you may not become a best-selling author before you land your dream job, having a book published is definitely helpful to your career. First, it gives you that authenticity that shows that you do actually know what you’re talking about. Second, it makes your company look good; if they had the sense to hire a published author, then they must really know their stuff. It presents an image, both of you and of the company, and is an achievement that not many people can put on their resume.
All in all, positioning yourself as an expert in a subject that you are actually an expert in, can only be beneficial to your job search. Make it work for you!
Author:
My name is Mark Clain. I support the effective adoption of new technologies or ways of working within writing by communicating complex information in an informative and inspiring way. My texts are varied – some of them are technical, requiring in-depth instruction, others are educational on Studymoose.com. I’m fond of writing articles for students, helping with essays.
