Get Out of Your Home and NETWORK (or Stay In and Use Technology)

Guest columnist for the Star Ledger, Lee Miller informs readers of the new ways to make future employment connections. Linked-in and Facebook are great ways to make connections and reinforce previous relationships. Another great networking site is coworkers.com which allows you to rate your coworkers' performance, analyze your ratings and improve your skills. This is a great site for people who are already in the business world.

Facebook and Twitter are great networking tools for people of all ages. It is suggested that people make two facebooks: one for personal relations and one for work relations. This way, future employers won't see those pics from your birthday in Vegas. For Twitter, it is recommended by author, Susan Britton Whitcomb, that you choose your identity wisely, shoot for a 75% to 25% professional tweet rate, be visible, and be worthy of a following.

We network everyday, yet it seems to be a difficult task. When looking for your next job just remember, Sit back, Relax, and Tweet!

Your Blog is a Reflection of You

Many organizations are looking at social networks before hiring new employees. Adam Darowski alerts his blog readers that your blog is a great way to network. It allows for future employees to expand on the type of personality they have and show how they are a great fit for a certain company. It is a great help to both the employers and those searching for a job to find the right fit. Joshua Porter agrees with Darowski. His blog breaks down Darowski's idea in a simpler way.
Porter breaks up each idea into bullet points. He then goes into detail for each point. This is extremely helpful to see how to build your online resume.

It makes sense that your blog reflects you, and how you have changed since the start of your blog; however, that means there is a lot of pressure to perfect everything you post. It is weird to think that what I am writing right now could someday be looked at by a future employer at my dream job.

It almost isn't fair to place this much weight on a blog because it hurts people who would rather solve math problems than write frequently about anything they can. Resumes and cover letters are stressful enough without worrying about our personal lives being judged.

T.R.U.S.T

Building trust with a virtual team is important, but can be challenging. Jaclyn Kostner thought of 6 great ways to help build trust: Availability, Competence, Consistency, Fairness, Openness, and Promise Fulfillment. She goes into detail about how each can be fulfilled. The most important is definitely openness. Just because you don't meet with a co-worker face to face doesn't give you a reason to hide what you are thinking. Openness is the key to every success. It can most definitely be challenging learning to share with someone you may have never seen, but sharing your feelings, ideas, and thoughts shows others that you trust them.

Remember when your mom told you 'honesty is the best policy'? Well, that is true in the business world. Honesty, especially when working on a business project, will help the project succeed because all the participants trust that they have all worked as hard as they can to create the best product they can.