I know a lot of people who refuse to use Facebook and Twitter. They often “don’t get it” (a frequent quote), are too busy or prefer old-fashioned ‘media’ like the telephone or meeting for a coffee. Personally, I think there is a place for all of these tools to stimulate social interaction and emotional development as well as to maintain and strengthen our professional networks. A beer on a Thursday evening is great, but so is a chuckle at a witty observation on the state of the rail network at 8am.
I’m not going to preach to you about social media. I’m sure that the last thing anyone wants to read is a sermon on 'Web 2.0'. Despite the hype from the cool guys in your marketing departments, social media isn’t quite the next Industrial Revolution but to dismiss it as a fad is short-sighted. These new online tools can be of use throughout your professional career and even more so when you searching for a new role. How? Why? Here are some reasons:
Research – At its most extreme, Twitter is a glut of banal comments about very little, but imagine you are considering a new job at large corporate. Using Twitter search allows you to very quickly mine the Twitter universe for the opinions of its stakeholders and customers in the rawest of forms. I’ve searched the name of a 250 year-old drinks group to find that they’ve launched a new whisky brand, are moving from ‘advertising campaigns’ to ‘movements’, got a $2bn tax break recently and are about to buy a Tanzanian beer. Google would have given me links to the staple stories via trusted news-sites, and probably a lot less memorable things to say in an interview!
Benchmarking – Finance professionals are of course human; we need to benchmark our professional progress. Aside from reading impersonal salary surveys, we often compare ourselves to our peers, both consciously and unconsciously, when measuring our career successes. Within our own organisations and ‘offline’ social network this is relatively easy, but online social media tools such as LinkedIn can, amongst other things, help to feed our curiosity about past colleagues success. Used in the right way, objectively and rationally, it can be both heartening and motivating to see how others who made similar choices have fared since. Seeing a former colleague who has started his own consultancy might just spur you to think about the same possibility, make contact and take some advice that will change your career direction.
Networking – Finding a new role or challenge is hugely dependent on how many people you know and how active you are within that network. That’s not to say that having 750 Facebook friends means you are one of life’s winners, but it maximises your chances of reaching that charity donation target, finding a home for an unwanted sofa or getting a response to “Colin is looking for a new job. Can you help?”. LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter all expand the reach of your network and, when managed sensibly, can create new opportunities from the most unlikely places. Almost all good companies to work for spend a lot of time and effort encouraging their staff to act as advocates and ambassadors, often rewarding employees handsomely for recommending friends to join the company. Facebook acts as great platform for spreading these messages in a trusted environment, and every so often I’ve sent or received an email suggesting a possible opportunity at Company X to people I know might be interested. It doesn’t stop me posting pictures of funny things or bizarre status updates, but it does have some professional benefits too.
In addition to the above, more recruiters are starting to use LinkedIn and Twitter in particular, providing yet another route to market for your CV or to the job grapevine.
And of course, there are still those boring teleconference calls that you can liven up.
If you haven’t tried any of these tools before, I hope this short piece has given you a reason or two to give it a go. I guess I’ll wait to see how many new followers I get on Twitter (@roughanc).
Colin qualified with Arthur Andersen in 2000, eventually leaving in 2002. After a brief stay at Centrica, he joined Carphone Warehouse and worked in assorted roles with Talk Talk and Geek Squad as Finance Director. After working with friends at Mint Digital, a social media agency, Colin is now looking for a new challenge.
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