By Josh Holderbaum
Western Herald
A Western Michigan University alumna hopes to help students use Web sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to their own advantage.
Erica Finley, a 2006 WMU graduate, will discuss “How College Grads are Leveraging Social Networking in the Job Search” at 4 p.m. Thursday in Dunbar Hall room 211.
“The goal for my presentation is to give students real advice that they can take home and start putting to work immediately,” Finley said.
“I was in their shoes not all that long ago, so I can relate to how daunting and overwhelming a job search can be. I’ll be providing the names of actual Twitter users they should be following that can be valuable resources, groups they should be joining on Facebook and LinkedIn to keep them better connected, and ways to make them stand out to potential employers.”
Finley, who now works as an assistant account executive at Berline, a Bloomfield Hills, Mich. advertising and marketing firm, got on Facebook and Twitter when both sites first came out.
“I hopped on Facebook right when it was first introduced in 2005,” Finley said. “At that time, it was only open to college students, and it was 100 percent about joining as many groups as possible and upping your friend count and zero percent about utilizing it as a networking tool to leverage internships or jobs.”
Finley realized the Web sites had a lot more potential than what was originally thought.
“Twitter came around a couple of years later, and I joined just to see what it was all about. After I was laid off from a newspaper gig in 2008, I had some extra time on my hands to figure out how to tap into all of my resources, both online and off, to make myself as employable as possible.”
Being on Twitter so early almost got Finley into an internship.
“Personally, as a direct result of one of my relationships via Twitter, I was offered an interview and eventually a full-time internship with benefits at a local company,” Finley said.
“While I didn’t end up accepting the internship because of another, more permanent opportunity, it was a big wake-up call to exactly what the site was capable of, and it made me want to explore all of its possibilities further.”
Of the three, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, Finley thinks the latter has the most potential.
“Facebook and LinkedIn are, for the most part, about who you know, but Twitter is about who you want to know,” Finley said.
“I can send a tweet directly to a reporter at the New York Times, and if they’re a savvy Twitter user, they can get back to me in a matter of minutes. And that reporter is just one of 75 million people I can reach directly on the site.”
However, students should still be careful about what they decide to post.
“Look at your profile as if you’re an employer considering you for a job,” Finley said.
“Would you hire you? Your text-from-last-night-type Facebook status or the crazy photos from your last Waldo’s trip might make your friends laugh, but the HR person at the company you just applied at might see those things and toss your résumé in the recycle bin before it even gets to the manager.”
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