As you can see, Twitter widgets are NON-operational for the site right now. Even when in my account, all I can generate is the header graphic saying “Twitter” and that’s about it. Anyone else having these issues with their widgets? Would love to get a little feedback in the comments section. Thanks!

As Gen-Y continues to spend more time online using social media platforms, reading news, sending e-mails and blogging, a multitude of job openings are following them into the digital sphere to catch their attention.

Diligent students looking to get hired need to find ways to stand out and be memorable. In today’s communications industry, they will need more than the standard cover letter, references and resume. They will need a story, or a personal brand to be memorable.

According to @DavidKamerer, these candidates need to have a story, be findable online, and learn to network across online platforms to find the best jobs.

Therefore, I have published my current protocol for the digital job hunt. This list may seem arduous, but it is also pretty convenient as the tasks can be done outside of business hours, while relaxing in pajamas! With students preoccupied with classes and jobs to pay the bills, it is your off hours at night that can be best utilized to get ahead.

This online pursuit isn’t the whole picture. The importance of belonging to student organizations, professional associations, attending networking events and looking within personal networks should never be overlooked.

However, those tactics have been studied, applied and practiced for years. There are already plethora of articles, books and seminars describing the best protocol for each.

This outline is a set of new ideas about 21st Century technologies helping students find 21st Century jobs. How can you expect to become a modern communicator if you can’t build your own brand online?

1) Materials and Prep

• Resume, preferably designed on Adobe InDesign, or using a Microsoft Online Template
  • At least 4 letters of recommendation, from past employers,  faculty, and fellow students
    • scanned, turned into PDFs and uploaded into whatever landing page on your site spells out your past work experiences
• Several semester-long projects, again scanned into PDFs and uploaded to your blog
  • consider attaching a header to each project that has the class, semester taken,  professor’s name, contact information and grade received
• @KateGales advises job applicants to have an easy-to-navigate online portfolio with several writing samples
  • this can be accomplished with separate pages with links to the writing samples, organized by topic or style (as in English Papers or News Releases)
• Twitter Profile
• • use the personal description as a sort of 140 character elevator pitch
  • retweet posts that reflect your academic or career interests
  • follow professionals and agencies you would like to work at
  • follow professors and classmates
  • follow student organizations and professional associations you belong to like Loyola Ad Club or PRSSA
  • set up a Hootsuite account with set bit.ly hyperlinks to continually re-post your work to your audience
• Facebook Profile
  • filled with current contact information
  • provide links to your blogs and work samples
  • include all past work details in the information tab
  • this information should be identical to the content on your resume, LinkedIn profile, Internships.com profile, RamblerLink profile and Facebook profile
  • scrub the profile of all scandalous pictures and comments
    • this includes references to alcohol, smoking, drug use late night posts, or lude comments, as many recruiters take into account personal habits when hiring
    • segment all friends into colleagues, family, college, high school and restricted friends.
      • you can then personalize the privacy settings per audience, just be sure to add all new friends to lists immediately if you aren’t prepared to take down all of your content
• LinkedIn.com
• • set up a profile with the same seen your resume
  • search and connect with all previous employers, faculty and classmates to keep up with who is working where
    • this will come in handy when looking for references within the company that you might be applying to
  • join Groups like PRSSA, IABC, Inbound Marketers, Public Relations, and Advertising
    • members of these groups frequently send out job openings, event invitations and tips, which get forwarded straight to your e-mail
  • write recommendations for old bosses, classmates and faculty members and they will be more likely to return the favor.
    • this is important as these recommendations are open to the public, where as specific letters of recommendation are a personal note that should only be shared or requested when applying for a specific position

2) Publishing your story through social media

• get a blog, preferrably one through Wordpress or Blogspot for their intuitive design elements and ease of use 
  • this home base will become an expanded resume, portfolio and news feed for your life
  • you can add longer job descriptions, show deep analysis of the results from previous work and academic projects
  • upload work samples and keep a blog on your professional development, academic interests and life experiences.
  • be sure the URL is as close to your name as possible
  • be sure the main contact e-mail is as close to this URL as possible
  • this keeps contact information streamlined, organized and easy to remember
  • create separate pages for About, Contact, Past Work Experiences, Projects, and Recommendations
  • do not list this information in blog posts, as it is very likely to remain unfound by new visitors
  • create a Twitter badge for a side column
    • this shows your understanding of inbound marketing concepts and widens your audience by showing them more ways to connect
  • upload resume, work samples, letters of recommendation to the media library as PDFs to enable easy viewing
    • embed these in the proper pages to make their location intuitive
  • never post your e-mail address, mailing address, or date of birth
    • there are bots out there actively scanning pages to gather such information, as it can lead to hacking social security information

3) Aggregating jobs online

• internships.com allows users to create a profile, that not only functions as a landing page to direct hiring managers, but also as a part of a database that employers frequently search and garner potential hires
• simplyhired.com is a job aggregation site that lets users save search terms like “social media intern” or “graphic design intern” and will send them the results of this search (after it aggregates these posts from other sites like monster.com) to their general e-mail daily.
  • by searching the site, users can see jobs posted up to a year ago, widening their search from only the most recent of posting
  • each job alert setting allows users to select geographical settings by zip code, like 25 miles around 60626 (Rogers Park)
• Twitter.com
  • make lists of tweeple (aka follows or contacts)
    • fill it with professionals in the field, agencies, and classmates. don’t forget to include special accounts that post jobs per said industry, like @prjob @NYCprjobs @DCprjobs
    • Label each by industry and region, like “Chicago PR” or “Minneapolis SM”
  • search hashtags like #prjob or #pr#job weekly or daily as these yield a multitude of results
    • save the searches with the best result, and it will produce searches that live update to save time
  • Get in touch with tweeple, but remember that it’s a process!
    • retweet great posts they have made that reflect your interests
    • suggest these contacts on #ff
      • follow friday is a #hashtag phenomenon where users suggest that their followers also follow whoever is listed after the #hashtag, often with a note on why they are worthy of such recommendation
    • @reply to give feedback about their posts, making intelligent commentary
    • @reply to ask them questions or advice regarding content they are posting or their within their stated area of expertise
    • DM (direct message) to ask for informational interviews
      • at this point, the contact should be familiar with the user, have replied to their tweets, and understand that they are a student interested in PR/ad/design
• Letting RSS Feeders work for you
  • navigate to corporate job posting pages, and add their RSS to your RSS feeder
  • edit your settings to select specific alerts you would like fed into daily e-mails and they will send you a note about how those pages have updated to save you the trip daily
    • many large corporations have now opted for search-only results for job openings to keep their pages light on data, so this won’t work for large companies like Cisco, Best Buy, Target, etc.
    • to remedy this, I set alarms on my Gmail to check in weekly
• Utilizing Search Engines
  • it never hurts to simply search open positions by region through a general search engine, using terms like “digital media internship, chicago” and bookmark all who have openings in a special folder in your browser (Google Chrome is especially handy for this, and I have folders labeled with each search I typically do)

Yesterday I attended back-to-back career panel discussions on Public Relations and Advertising as a part of Career Week at Loyola’s School of Communications. After hearing five professionals lead a discussion on their industries, the distinction between the two fields of communication became very clear.

The public relations panel stressed that students should possess strong writing skills, a broad familiarity with online technology,  a personal brand built through social networking sites, a resume that fits the specific job description, and a strong cover letter. The panel spoke of changes in corporate social responsibility, the strained relationships between public relations professionals and traditional media outlets, the burgeoning field of social media, and the balancing act of openly and honestly representing a client in a world where dialogues are happening in hundreds of mediums.

While the professionals were kind enough to stop by and discuss their professional experiences, I was very underwhelmed by the insights the ad panel had to share. The only clear messages were the benefits of networking in finding a job. I think the ad panel should have consulted the PR panel to construct their message before speaking at the event… but hey, maybe I’m biased ;)