Search Me

Throughout his career, John McGee has learned of several job opportunities through contacts with friends and colleagues in the nonprofit world. He suspects his current job hunt will take a similar path — but that pivotal job lead might just come from someone he has never met.

Mr. McGee, a resident of Woodstock, Ga., is tapping social networking — the cultivation and maintenance of personal connections via the Internet — as one tool in his search for a nonprofit leadership position. He is a member of LinkedIn, a professional social-networking site that is widely viewed as the best source for building professional networks and unearthing job opportunities.

Mr. McGee has more than 200 LinkedIn connections, including human-resources and charity executives, lawyers, consultants, and other professionals who share his interest in helping charities comply with government regulations and helping abused children. Mr. McGee’s profile also details his 32 years of nonprofit experience, 24 of which were in senior management positions.

“My connections on LinkedIn become aware of my expertise and interests, and also that I am available for employment,” Mr. McGee says. “I don’t use LinkedIn as the be-all, end-all to my job search. I view my contacts as long-term relationships. If they generate a career opportunity, though, that will be wonderful.”

Mr. McGee is far from alone. The use of social-networking sites as a job-hunting tool is soaring, as a fast-tightening labor market has many of those seeking employment looking for an edge — and working their contacts. Meanwhile, a growing number of nonprofit recruiters are scouting networks for prospects and using the sites as a way to assess candidates.

“The hands-down social-networking tool for a job seeker right now is LinkedIn,” says Jason Alba, the founder of JibberJobber, a career-management Web site, and author of two books about Facebook and LinkedIn. “That is where hiring managers are, that is where recruiters are, and that is where all the HR people involved in the job search are. More and more decision makers at nonprofits are growing more comfortable with social-networking tools.”

Rapid Growth

Since online social networking first emerged in the mid-1990s, networks such as Facebook and MySpace have grown into virtual communities of millions, typically drawn together by shared interests, affiliations, or simply a desire to connect with others. The premise is relatively standard from site to site: Participants create profiles describing their backgrounds, hobbies, and interests, often including photographs, personal information, blogs, even favorite songs or video clips. LinkedIn is geared more toward professionals, with the content shared by participants often limited to career and education information.

Job hunting — by seekers and employers — has grown into one of LinkedIn’s primary revenue streams. (The company’s executives told Time magazine in October that recruiting revenue accounts for about 30 percent of the company’s earnings. LinkedIn charges fees for job postings as well as offering paid services for recruiters who are seeking candidates.) And the slowing economy and rising unemployment is accelerating that growth. Job searches on LinkedIn increased 19 percent from August to September alone, the most recent figures available.

Marnie Webb, co-chief executive of TechSoup, a San Francisco organization that helps other nonprofit groups use technology, says the ability of social networking to connect employers with prospects is hard to fully measure. With cybernetworks so far-reaching and viral, Ms. Webb points out, it’s often difficult to track how a candidate learned of a job opening — or made a connection with an eventual employer.

Ms. Webb and her co-workers are active users of LinkedIn as a recruiting tool, particularly for specialized or hard-to-fill positions.

When sharing an open position, Ms. Webb creates an “e-mail blast” that details the job and then sends it to a list of her LinkedIn connections, asking if they know of any qualified candidates. The message then spreads virally, as LinkedIn members share it with their connections and forward it to other friends and associates.

“I write a cover note about what I personally think is interesting about the job and then target who I’m sending it to, so I’m not just spamming people,” Ms. Webb says.

She says a nonprofit recruiter can maximize the power of the Internet only when the person posting or sending the messages is an active social networker and not simply using sites to find a candidate (or, in the case of a job seeker, solely to look for a job).

“It just doesn’t work if you simply delegated a hiring manager to be on LinkedIn,” Ms. Webb says. “People need to be vested in the process. What makes it work is different people connecting with their different contacts. Maybe the person you hire ends up being a connection of your CIO, CFO, or marketing manager.”

Virtual Rsums

In many ways, LinkedIn, and other social-networking sites serve as virtual résumés. Carol Patterson, vice president of marketing communications at CityTeam Ministries, a social-service charity in San Francisco, is a frequent Facebook user and often reviews profiles in search of potential hires.

Recently she put the word out to her staff that the organization was looking for an Internet-savvy graphic designer. One of her staff members knew of a good prospect and showed Ms. Patterson the candidate’s Facebook profile, which included links to her graphics portfolio.

“Just by looking at the Facebook profile, I could see that she was local, I could see that she was a good writer and a good designer. All the things you’d want to see from a résumé and more was there, and I was seeing live and interactive,” says Ms. Patterson.

The candidate was hired for the position and continues to be a strong performer at CityTeam. Ms. Patterson continues to communicate with her employees via Facebook after they are hired.

“The younger generation are very into Facebook, so it’s important to connect with them in that space,” Ms. Patterson says. “To keep them passionate about their job or interested in your organization, you have to create an environment that is inspiring and really connected to the cause.”

Profiles Gone Wild

Still, for some social-network users, particularly the Facebook and MySpace crowd, an online profile can be more bane than benefit when it comes to landing a job. A new survey by CareerBuilder.com found that more than one in five employers search social-networking sites to screen job candidates. The survey of more than 31,000 employers found that reliance on such sites to vet candidates is surging, and that one-third of hiring managers said they found information on social-networking sites that caused them to eliminate a candidate from consideration.

Top areas of concerns include profiles that mention alcohol and drug use; inappropriate photos or information posted on a candidate’s page; poor communication and writing skills; and criticism of co-workers or former employers.

Yet Ms. Webb, of TechSoup, speculates that as more people participate in social networking, recruiters may place less emphasis on the personal information that job candidates post online.

“Is it really surprising to anyone that college kids drink beer?” Ms. Webb says. “The only difference is now we have a picture of them doing it. It’s one thing if they seem to totally lack judgment, but increasingly people are making more of their private lives public, and I think, to some degree, it’s losing its impact.”

‘Blasting Your Network’

Mr. Alba, of JibberJobber, suggests that potential candidates do everything possible to present a polished, creative, and professional online image.

“When people ask me, ‘What’s the biggest mistake to make in social networking?,’ it is an incomplete, sloppy, or inappropriate profile,” Mr. Alba says. “You can create a good profile in an hour. It’s not like this is mind-bending work.”

And once a user is online, Mr. Alba says, the secret is to be an active networker — preferably before the need arises to look for a job. He suggests users post information that would be interesting to their particular networks, answer questions, and add connections. For those involved in an active job search, Mr. Alba suggests sending a monthly e-mail newsletter updating their network on their search and asking for potential leads.

“I’m an advocate for blasting your network and proactively dumping information into their inbox,” Mr. Alba says. “Our friends and network want to help us, it’s just that often they don’t know how. It could be that something in your blast sparks a thought about a potential job lead.

“You want to network, nurture existing relationships, build new ones, and brand yourself as much as possible,” he says. “You never know when an opportunity might be out. Connections that you make today can pay off in ways you can’t even imagine down the road.”