We had a tweet chat back in August with Tunde Omotoye and he shared so many gems and I genuinely could not keep it just on Twitter as I know a lot of you don’t use Twitter often and this is knowledge I believe is valuable for everyone.
INTRODUCTION
Hey everyone, for our tweet chat this evening we have @TundeTASH on board, he’s a Certified HR Professional, a Senior Business Operations Analyst and avid Storyteller(pretty sure you’ve read his threads).
The topic he would be educating us on this evening is ‘Leveraging Social Media Usage For Job Positioning’ and to participate or read through, simply use the hashtags #GROWchat and #ChatwithTunde
GROW: What does social media mean to you?
Tunde: Let me start by putting simply, ‘Social Media to me is where I connect with as many as possible, share as many resources as possible & also a place to gather first-hand information while on the go.’
And breaking it down into four different parts, with Social media I am able to:
- Connect with existing & new audiences to share ideas, collaborate & discourse on issues regarding career dev, tech, etc.
- Discover new ideas & trends
- Bring attention & traffic to my work as a person
- Build, craft & enhance my brand.
GROW: Very informative, thank you!
GROW: How does a fresh graduate leverage upon social media usage to position his/herself for job opportunities?
Tunde: Truth is, Social Media has changed the narrative of how numerous things are done today.
For a fresh graduate, how to leverage upon social media is to first create a LinkedIn profile if you do not already have one.
Once your LinkedIn profile is created, ensure to
1. Keep your profile up to date
2. Highlight your recent qualification and experience (if any)
3. Be detailed about skills & objectives
4. Let people know you’re available
GROW: We did a bit of snooping, so we know you’re an HR professional, how does HR leverage on social media to recruit talent?
Tunde: Many ways if you’d ask me. Do you know over 1/3 of organisations have taken steps to leverage mobile recruiting, thereby targeting smartphone users? Also, recruiting via social media is growing with 84% of organisations actively using social media to hire.
What HR does is create organisation profiles on numerous social media & recruitment platforms to post jobs. Thereby, targeting active job seekers.
However, we need to note that HR also uses social media to find and connect with passive candidates as well.
Here are some of the platforms organisations post jobs regularly:
– Indeed
– CareerBuilder
– Google For Jobs
– Monster
– ‘even Facebook’
GROW: Have you ever landed a position/opportunity off social media and how did you go about it (if yes)?
Tunde: Yes I have.
I landed my second role in Canada off Social Media via a referral.
I was relocating to Toronto and informed a long time colleague. Fortunately, he had heard of an opening within and asked me to share my resume.
The rest today is history.
GROW: Amazing!!
How does one decide on an online niche and then build a brand around it?
Tunde: One can decide an online niche based on:
– Career
– Interests
– Hobbies
– Product / Services
Once you decide which of these you are building your brand around, then you have to decide what platform will work best.
Different platforms have their different strengths so it’s best to research.
Facebook, Instagram, Amazon are all known to carry weight for brands that tend towards product and services.
LinkedIn, Twitter for career, news, tech updates and the likes.
GROW: Thank you so much for sharing. As much as you’re a professional, you’re also a creative, how do you balance both worlds? (we peeped your Instagram page too)
Tunde: I love how you put gifs to the questions.
I love art and writing, and they are part of me. Even when I become the CEO of a company someday, these are things I’d continue to do. Having said that, work is work and art is art.
GROW: Thank you!!! Writing is an indispensable skill and your art is amazing.
The internet can be very vile sometimes, how do you deal with negative backlash online?
Tunde: Well, I haven’t really gotten any negative backlash per se.
However, I see some comments sometimes & I just ignore or move on because I have better questions or inquiries to respond to rather than wasting emotions & efforts to someone I don’t know.
In addition to this, I have found that the majority of folks who get backlash sometimes need to work on being more emotionally intelligent.
More followers or more influence doesn’t automatically mean you know what to say or how to say it.
GROW: Thank you for the advice, more of us should do this. In the instance where someone has already built an online brand with a poor reputation, how can they rebrand themselves?
Tunde: I haven’t been in such spot, but I believe the following can help:
- First, apologize & put out a statement if you’ve been called out.
- Secondly, never respond to topics based on emotions or sentiments.
- Be open to criticism and provide feedback.
Also, social media is what you make of it.
Always remember:
Positive Input = Positive Output
What you give is what you get
GROW: Whoops! Final question(I’m sad this is coming to an end☹️) What advice do you have for youth looking to build an online brand and how can they navigate their social media usage?
Tunde: Well, to build an online brand one has to first decide where one wants to build that brand.
Is it Twitter? Is it LinkedIn? Is it Instagram?
Next is to know what you are building that brand for. Is it for career? Is it to sell products/services?
Also, for youth looking to build an online brand for career development, be active on LinkedIn. Follow organisations you love and read on active industry trends to polish the knowledge of the field or industry you are looking to follow.
Thank you for reading this article, feel free to ask any questions you might have below and also offer suggestions!
Yomi Olusunle
Brands and Digital Innovation