Maximize Your Career Search with Social Media

When you're trying to build your career, social media can be one of the best tools to help you find new opportunities and increase your personal brand. Right now, there seems to be a huge digital divide between job seekers.

On one side, you have the group of people who typically haven't had to look for a job in at least a decade. They hold tightly to the job search strategies of the past, like listing every job they've ever had on their resume and believing that they need to “beat the streets” to find work. This group uses email and online job boards, but they shy away from really creating a professional identity on social media sites.

On the other side of the divide, there are the workers who have been looking for a job for some time or who have found and lost a couple of jobs in the past 5 years. These job seekers are savvy about creating their social media presence, developing their personal brand and marketing their skills in a way that makes their resume an advertisement, rather than a biography.

Unfortunately, members of the first group are having a much harder time finding work. When I've asked people why they didn't have a cohesive personal brand, most said that they never really got the hang of social networking sites. Even though they saw the clear value in doing it, they didn't know how to make it work for them.

For those who haven't used social media (and those who want to tweak their social media usage), here are a few tips that will have you networking and making connections.

Make your profile interesting and relevant – Whether you're using Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, you'll be given space to write your profile. It's usually one of the first steps in setting up your account and not surprisingly, it's the part that stops most users. It's hard to know what to write and many people find writing about themselves to be a painful process. LinkedIn's is geared more toward a professional platform that allows people to write their career story. We all have one so think about your career progress, your education and every career accomplishment you've made along the way. When you really think about them, you'll see how you've been moving forward and furthering your own goal. Once you find your unique voice, writing your profile becomes easier. Facebook and Twitter are more of a streamlined platform of communication but just the same, they need to have a good profile developed that represents you in the best light.

Get involved in the conversation – Find companies in your industry and connect with them on LinkedIn. Add them to your contacts, follow them or like their page on Facebook, which will also get you connected. It's also a good idea to follow industry related publications, bloggers and even industry leaders. This will ensure that you hear about new and interesting changes in your field before others. Having cutting edge information makes it so much easier for you to do the next step.

Share thoughtfully – If you share information that is interesting and of value to others, you'll begin to develop a reputation as a valuable resource. The people that you've connected with will look forward to your posts and will be more likely to make comments about them. This will allow you to get more involved in conversations and will lead to people trying to connect with you, which will expand your network and look impressive to a potential employer.

Also, you should not let your personal views get in the way of your career development. That means that you don't want to share graphics and anything that isn't professional on your profile. Everyday, I see people doing this and it can really ruin your image in the eyes of a potential employer. More often employers are searching social media sites of candidates to get a pulse on what they think and do socially. You don't want any information to look unprofessional and for that reason, it is important to have a separate social media profile for your personal life especially on Facebook. Keep your personal settings for friends only and not to be shared or viewed by the general public. Facebook and Twitter are minefields of thoughtless moments that can really paint the wrong picture if you aren't on top of what you put out there.

Have a clear strategy – Set aside time each day to work on your social media accounts. Spend one day looking for new connections and reading blogs and another day for posting. Not scheduling your tasks will make it much more likely that you'll network in fits and starts, which will make it more difficult to build a good reputation. If you make it a priority and take things slow, you'll be able to build your social network without getting overwhelmed.

Make social media part of your job search. Expand your knowledge and enlighten your mind with the tools you need to excel in your life! Work with a Business and Life Management Coach with over 20 years’ experience empowering people to attain self-defined success in their professional & personal lives. Book a free session at www.denisedema.com today.

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Calm Your Life Through Stress Management

Many of us experience stress at work and in our personal life, whether this is in the short term from one-off projects, or long-term stress from a high-pressure career. Not only can this be profoundly unpleasant, it can seriously affect our health and our work. However, it is possible to manage stress, if you use the right tools and techniques.

 

What is Stress? A widely accepted definition of stress is a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize. This means that we experience stress if we believe that we don't have the time, resources, or knowledge to handle a situation. In short, we experience stress when we feel "out of control." 

This also means that different people handle stress differently, in different situations: you'll handle stress better if you're confident in your abilities, if you can change the situation to take control, and if you feel that you have the help and support needed to do a good job.

Reactions to Stress. We have two instinctive reactions that make up our stress response. These are the "fight or flight" response, both of these reactions can happen at the same time.

Fight or Flight is a basic, short-term survival response, which is triggered when we experience a shock, or when we see something that we perceive as a threat. Our brains then release stress hormones that prepare the body to either "fly" from the threat, or "fight" it. This energizes us, but it also makes us excitable, anxious, and irritable. The problem with the fight or flight response is that, although it helps us deal with life-threatening events, we can also experience it in everyday situations – for example, when we have to work to short deadlines, when we speak in public, or when we experience conflict with others. In these types of situations, a calm, rational, controlled, and socially-sensitive approach is often more appropriate.

We cope with stress in three distinct phases:

1.    The alarm phase, where we react to the stressor.

2.    The resistance phase, where we adapt to, and cope with, the stressor. The body can't keep up resistance indefinitely, so our physical and emotional resources are gradually depleted.

3.    The exhaustion phase, where, eventually, we're "worn down" and we cannot function normally. 

Stress and the Way We Think. When we encounter a situation, we make two (often unconscious) judgments. First, we decide whether the situation is threatening – this could be a threat to our social standing, values, time, or reputation, as well as to our survival. This can then trigger the fight or flight response, and the alarm phase. Next, we judge whether we have the resources to meet the perceived threat. These resources can include time, knowledge, emotional capabilities, energy, strength, and much more. How stressed we feel then depends on how far out of control we feel, and how well we can meet the threat with the resources we have available.

 

Signs of Stress. Everyone reacts to stress differently. However, some common signs and symptoms of the fight or flight response includes:

• Frequent headaches.
• Cold or sweaty hands and feet.
• Frequent heartburn, stomach pain, or nausea.
• Panic attacks.
• Excessive sleeping or insomnia.
• Persistent difficulty concentrating.
• Obsessive or compulsive behaviors.
• Social withdrawal or isolation.
• Constant fatigue.
• Irritability and angry episodes.
• Significant weight gain or loss.
• Consistent feelings of being overwhelmed or overloaded.

Consequences of Stress. Stress impacts our ability to do our jobs effectively, and it affects how we work with other people. This can have a serious impact on our careers, and well as on our general well-being and relationships. Long-term stress can also cause conditions such as burnout, cardiovascular disease, stroke, depression, high blood pressure, and a weakened immune system. (Sure, if you're stressed, the last thing you want to think about is how damaging it can be. However, you do need to know how important it is to take stress seriously.)

How to Manage Stress. The first step in managing stress is to understand where these feeling are coming from. Try to identify the causes of short-term or frequent stress in your life by keeping a stress diary. As you write down events, think about why this situation stresses you out.  Next, list these stressors in order of their impact. Which affect your health and well-being most? And which affect your work and productivity? Then, consider using some of the approaches below to manage your stress. You'll likely be able to use a mix of strategies from each area.

Action-Oriented Approaches take action to change the stressful situations. Your workload can cause stress, if you don't manage your time well. This can be a key source of stress for very many people.

Identify where you can improve and make sure that you use time management tools to help manage your priorities. Think about what's most important in your role, so that you can prioritize your work more effectively. This helps you reduce stress, because you get the greatest return from your efforts, and you minimize the time you spend on low-value activities. Also, avoid multitasking all day, only check email at certain times and don't use electronic devices for a while before going to bed, so that you use this time to "switch off" fully.

Other People can be a significant source of stress as well. Articles that address Being Honest With Others, Creating Boundaries, and learning to develop Positive Relationships will help ensure better respectful connections with others.

Workspace stress can come from irritating, frustrating, uncomfortable, or unpleasant conditions in the workplace. Take action to minimize your stress in your working environment. 

Emotion-Oriented Approaches are useful when the stress you're experiencing comes from the way that you perceive a situation. Actually a lot of stress comes from overly-negative thinking.

To change how you think about stressful situations:

• Learn to think more positively.
• Seek to understand before reacting.
• Change your perception and eliminate negative thinking.

Some people experience stress because they're maladaptive perfectionists, who struggle to let go of tasks unless they complete them perfectly. Others experience stress because they have a fear of failure or a fear of success. If any of these apply to you, use the techniques explained in these articles to adjust your mindset accordingly.

Acceptance-Oriented Approaches apply to situations where you have no power to change what happens, and where situations are genuinely bad.

To build your defenses against stress:

• Use techniques like meditation and physical relaxation to calm yourself when you feel stressed.
• Take advantage of support network – this could include your friends and family  as well as people at work and professional providers, such as professional coaches, counselors or family doctors.
• Get enough exercise and sleep, and learn how to make the most of your down time, so that you can recover from stressful events.
• Learn how to cope with change and build resilience, so that you can overcome setbacks.

Key Points

We experience stress when we feel threatened, and when we believe that we don't have the resources to deal with a challenging situation. Over time, this can cause long-term health problems; and it can also affect the quality of our work and our productivity.

To control your stress, conduct a job analysis, so that you know your most important priorities at work. Learn good time management strategies, so that you can handle your priorities effectively. Try to let go of negative thinking habits, and become a positive thinker by using affirmations and visualization.

Also, create defenses against stressful situations that you cannot control – use your network, be sure to get enough exercise and sleep, and learn how to relax.

Expand your knowledge and enlighten your mind with the tools you need to excel in your life! Work with a Business and Life Management Coach with over 20 years’ experience empowering people to attain self-defined success in their professional & personal lives. Book a free session at www.denisedema.com  today.

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