Paranoia is a term used to describe a psychosis of fear. That is exactly what recession brings in the mind of business leaders, consumers and employees. Fear of financial insecurity and depressed markets drive them to behave like heard of sheep; one business follows the other and law of random motion predicts their overall direction. Recovery is definite but the timing is unpredictable and incalculable.

If your job is not affected by the ongoing recession or has not even got the heat of it, then I must say that you are lucky person. Hold on to your profession for time being, but change it as soon as there is recovery. The logic is simple: if a domain of expertise is not going down with a recession, it will not have high growth trajectory once we recover from a recession. Yes, there are exceptions to this piece of advice but they are driven by chances rather than choices.

Tomorrow may be distant, but trouble is knocking at the door for lots of guys right now, so here are the “Latest Job-Hunting Mantras.”

Job-Hunting Mantras:

A harsh job market looks more like a dried up seasonal river with scattered patches of water rather than a desert and employability of workforce gets reduced to nine months rather then twelve. There are jobs in the market with distorted demand and supply equation. But “Extraordinary times must call for extraordinary measures”, so let us analyze the hot potato of job search with the social networking buzz. I have serialized these mantras based on the freshness of the thoughts.

Get your Interviewer

Nielsen reports that 80% of online users in Brazil are registered on social networks, followed by Spain with 75%, Italy 73% and Japan 70%**. Possibility that your interviewer himself is registered on social networking site is also the same. I say get to know him, not by a “friend request” but by crawling through his profile, contacts and viewpoints. This puts you in comfort zone with that fellow and reduces the chances of unwarned impulsive responses while meeting strangers. During an interview, companies and interviewers know a lot about the candidate based on their resume, referrals etc. But social networking empowers a candidate to learn about the organization, structure, policies and more importantly, the interviewer.

Not all the user profiles are accessible to everyone on social networking sites. Buying a “Business Account” is a good idea in that scenario. Business accounts empower you with the freedom of looking into random profiles, for business purposes obviously. This is perfectly legal, moral and falls under the walls of social networking, as job seeker has no intention of spamming.

Get your network right

There are scores of social networking websites with different appeals, markets and backyards. Select the ones with more professional relevance rather than pictorial. For Job hopping one might prefer Linkedin to Orkut, hi5, Facebook, Myspace. Linkedin allows career-oriented individuals to post a formal job-centered profile. The reason is simple – Linkedin is intended to be used this way, for making professional contacts, to be in touch with your colleagues and to form business groups. All the social networking websites are more or less the same at abstract, but their individual name stays in their specialized fields.

Zoominfo is another such interesting network when it comes to learning about people, companies, domains and contact details. Zoominfo has indexed 45 million individuals and 5 million companies; categorized them under various taxonomies targeted marketing. If you are interested in recruiting, sales, marketing and business research then they also have commercial accounts.

Try out Xing this is another promising destination for professionals. For Indian professionals there is ApnaCircle, which suits job hunters. This website needs no more explanation then that it is backed by Sabir Bhatia (one of the co-founders of hotmail).

Get your resume right

Resume writing skills are the important ones, but their detailed discussion is out of the scope of this blog. In your resume, links to your professional networks and blogs play an important part in candidate short listing. Get them right and highlight them well.

Now a days, many human resource consultancies run their own recruitment groups on the social/professional networking sites. Joining such groups is not a bad idea, at all. You will be informed about the latest vacancies in the group via postings and will be contacted for new positions in your Linkedin account. Not all the job vacancies land up on the recruitment portals, lots of them are getting exhausted on professional networks.

Get your reviews right

As you have formed a network of professionals known to you, let them serve as your references for the next job. New employer may not have to hire inspection firm for your background checks if he/she knows anyone in your professional network.

Once you have your professional network, request individuals for their reviews on your professional capabilities. Good reviews from your past/current bosses, subordinates and colleagues can land you in a good job sooner than expected. These website have scores of job opportunities once you have made a trustworthy network.

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Some websites only run career-networks for Job-hunting, which I have discounted for this blog. Networking profiles formed on these kinds of websites do not have very long life cycles. Some others run referral networks where you can get paid for refereeing candidates for the job vacancy. Those are also of the scope of this posting.

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Reference:

** Nielsen Report

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