Pinterest is everywhere. It is the latest social media platform to become a craze and a way to never forget that favorite recipe or craft idea you have been meaning to try. But can Pinterest be a helpful tool for your job search? This just in: it can.
It is becoming more and more popular for cutting-edge companies to create Pinterest pages, which they use to interact and provide a unique way for getting to know their company. Most of the companies with a Pinterest page are in the creative fields, like digital media, graphic arts, retail and marketing. Creating a page and making it an original can be harder for students in the more traditional majors and careers, but not impossible.
Brie Weiler Reynolds is the social media manager at FlexJobs and a former career counselor at Emmanuel College who recently penned the article “Using Pinterest as a Job-Search and Branding Tool,” for the The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). Reynolds believes students need to think of their majors in visual form, given the graphic aspect of the Pinterest social platform. This means focusing on pictures that represent their areas of interest, projects they have completed, and organizations or associations where they are involved.
It is also important to write a little something about each picture that you post to give a description, which will assist the viewer in having a better understanding of how this pictures relates to you professionally (and contributes to your search results so hiring employers can find you).
Reynolds has created some tips and strategies for using Pinterest to its full potential and for ways in which it might help you in your job search.
To use Pinterest as a personal branding tool, college students should:
- Create resume boards on which they pin pictures related to their school and work experiences.
- Create portfolio boards with examples of their work, which is especially good for creative fields.
- Pin a copy of their resume with text that says “please share.”
- Create boards related to their interests to spotlight their insight in the specialized area.
- Place their Pinterest URLs on their job-search materials, including resumes, cover letters, e-mail signatures, profiles on LinkedIn, and more. Make sure they use their actual name as their Pinterest page name so people can easily find them through a search.
For using Pinterest as a job-search tool, students should:
- Follow employers they want to work for on Pinterest to learn about the employers’ marketing efforts and corporate culture.
- Follow career services offices and experts to learn about the best job-search strategies, trends, and advice.
- Get ideas for places to work by seeing what organizations their employers of interest follow.
- Create boards for “Places I’d Like to Work” and “My Dream Job.”
- Use keywords like “hiring,” “human resources,” “recruiting,” and more to find employers that are using Pinterest to recruit.
***Disclaimer: Pinterest should not replace any other traditional parts of the job search but should be used to aid in the job search. If you are a current Regis student or a Regis graduate and have any other questions about the job search, resumes, cover letters or any other topics related to careers, please make an appointment to meet with a career counselor. It’s free!
http://www.regis.edu/career.htm
