Rules for working my social network

By Carl Ford

To me, the value of a social network is in the connection.  I start and participate in groups, but do not like general posts in forums.  I also have been trained to keep my opinions to myself.  Or at least make them public when I have the intention of being able to defend them.

So, for the posting of status messages, I only use for sharing general information - and with good reason. The potential new hire from Cisco who Tweeted about mulling over taking a fat paycheck and hating the work no longer has that problem.

I am also aware of risqué and questionable Facebook pictures and posts that have hurt people's job chances.

On the positive side of social networking tools, the use of Video Curriculum Vitae has become a good tool in the personal job search.

Here is my personal advice for working your social network.

First of all, I like Linkedin as a search tool.  I also use Zoominfo and recommend them both.  They are good at finding the right name for the right company.

Having found the name, it pays to search for that person on Skype - it is one of the few places where a person's name is pretty easy to discover and with a shot at finding a match to a Skype ID.

On Facebook, it's pretty much a hit or miss and, except for Google, MS, AOL, and Yahoo! employees, the odds are more likely that the person's buddy list name is obscure/hard-to-find on other IM clients.

So Skype is the way to go for a more efficient way to location someone for direct contact.

Skype is really accomplishing the goal of being an alternative public network. It is a better method of reaching out to introduce myself than the hit or miss of directory services.  And as more devices add the dual existence of Skype apps, the ability to blend into new services gives Skype the clear advantage.  For a bonus, my Skype Out settings give me access to better than traditional call forwarding and voice mail.

It also has the residual benefit of not mixing business with pleasure.  An IM chat is exactly the kind of level setting that enables a conversation to be what it should be. I know the audience I am reaching out to and I have the opportunity of limiting unintended consequences; mind you, I am always aware that IM's can be posted and altered.

A Note of Caution:  I am not looking to create a spam surge on Skype.  Like Jeff Pulver's rules of email etiquette, you should have a single purpose introduction and allow people to make up their mind if they want to be contacted via this system.  If too many people use the system for wrong purposes, the value declines.

However, the good outweighs the bad. Go ahead and give it a try.

Carl Ford's words of wisdom can be found at www.carlford.net