Attract Supply Chain Employers By Optimizing Your Social Media Profiles
In today’s technologically advanced world, many recruiters spend as much time searching social media platforms like LinkedIn as they do utilize job boards like Monster and CareerBuilder to find qualified individuals for their supply chain job openings. You can attract supply chain employers through optimizing your social media profiles. Having a strong presence on as many platforms as possible will increase your chances of being discovered on a supply chain recruiter’s next search.
When using Social Media for professional networking, it’s important to represent yourself with a consistent “brand.” Before you get started with optimizing your profile, here a few quick tips to brand yourself effectively:
Have a professional take your photo, and use it on all of your online profiles.
Use the same name, or handle, across all Social Media profiles, as well as the same profile description.
For example, I use “SCM Talent” as my handle across all of my online profiles. If you search Google for “SCM Talent,” you’ll see that most of my profiles appear on page one, because my handles are consistent.
Defensive Googling – run searches, or better yet, set up a Google Alert on yourself, to see what employers/ recruiters would find. If you find anything negative, delete the information from your profile so it cannot be discovered via an internet search.
Focus on Supply Chain Centric Keywords
Before doing anything else, attract supply chain employers by identifying the most popular search terms that are associated with your supply chain skill set, qualifications, and experience. For example, if you work in Logistics, you may want to include keywords like transportation, 3PL, warehousing, intermodal, etc.
Next, be sure to incorporate these keywords into ALL of your online profiles, ensuring hey flow naturally so that it reads well and doesn’t appear that you’re “keyword stuffing” your profile in efforts to improve search rankings. This way, when a recruiter is running a targeted search on LinkedIn or Google for qualified candidates with a certain skill or keyword, your profile will have a higher probability of ranking higher within the search results.
The following social platforms are some of the top resources for recruiters to find supply chain talent:
LinkedIn is one of the most important platforms for recruiters to find supply chain talent. Many firms, including ours, pay for a premium package that allows our supply chain recruiters to search for specific keywords, years of experience, skills, degrees, and much more.
If your profile isn’t complete, chances are you won’t show up on a recruiter’s radar when sourcing for candidates. In addition to In order to reap the full networking benefits, you need to be an active participator.
Start by:
- Engaging in posts, commenting on articles, and contributing to discussions. You can gain exposure to potential employers and build your network at the same time.
- Updating your profile to the setting: “Open to New Opportunities”. Your employer and coworkers will not be able to see this, however, it entices supply chain recruiters to reach out to you for potential opportunities knowing that you’re open to exploring new career opportunities.
- Following companies you are interested in potentially working for in order to stay abreast of new job postings or news updates.
- Joining the maximum number of 50 LinkedIn Groups, including some of the more popular LinkedIn Supply Chain Groups.
While Facebook may seem more of a personal/ recreational platform to keep up with friends and family, it also has a strong potential for professional networking. Below are a few tips for taking advantage of its potential:
- Complete the work and education sections, making it easy for potential employers to find you.
- Join Groups related to your experience and industry, such as Supply Chain Jobs or Logistics & Supply Chain Management Professionals and the like.
- “Like” the business pages of employers on your Target Company List, as well as supply chain associations, to stay abreast of news, job postings, advice and other content.
- Clean up your profile! Remove any negative or inappropriate images or posts that could prevent you from a job opportunity.
- Facebook has recently launched a job posting feature. Be sure to browse open opportunities here, where you can apply using your completed profile.
Twitter is a great way to keep on top of breaking supply chain industry news as well as new job openings. When using Twitter, be sure to:
- Include your primary keywords in your Twitter bio to make yourself more discoverable.
- Regularly tweet or retweet about topics and news within your functional area.
- Include hashtags such as #supplychain, #logistics, #procurement, #manufacturing.
- Follow all companies on your Target Employer List. Sometimes companies have a separate Twitter handle for tweeting their jobs, so you’ll want to follow these as well.
- Use social media tools such as Hootsuite to automate your tweets and maximize your presence on the platform
Website/Blog
Blogging can be a great way to publish your thoughts on your supply chain topics of interest, show off your resume, highlight your professional skills and attract supply chain employers. WordPress is one of the most user-friendly blog hosting sites. It’s also free and includes a lot of great plugins to create a fully optimized site.
Checkout this infographic below for more information!
