There’s no easy answer, but here are five ‘types’ we’ve observed.  Which one are you?  Which is your manager?  What are the benefits and pitfalls of each type?

1.) Mr. Don’t Know.  Don’t Care

This is the manager who doesn’t Tweet, doesn’t FaceBook, and might be on LinkedIn because it’s ‘for business.’  They say ignorance is bliss, but willful ignorance of social media means not knowing anything about a vital element of communication today.  It might be fun to buck trends but it’s not always good management.  Imagine not having a computer or telephone or mimeograph machine?  Technology has always been with us, so start adopting today’s

2.)  The Iron Curtain

Waste of time.  Shut it all down.  Put up firewalls.  Block those sites.  Problem solved, right?  The problem is that you’ve shut down communication with the outside world and made your workplace a less desirable place to be.  It’s kind of like high school without the pep rallies.  Or prison without the shivs.

3.)  Loosey Goosey

It’s all good.  Do whatever you want.  Tweet.  Twitter.  Squawk.  Let’s all do this thing because…well, just tweet.  The problem here is that there is no work objective attached to social media or policy on social use.  No one would read a paper at their desk or gab on the phone all day with friends.  There are social norms with these older technologies so develop a few for the newer ones.

4.)   The Technocrat

Everyone must blog, must tweet, must post to FB about the following topics…

The intention here is good and might actually work.  The problem is that you’re in danger of shutting down free thought and creating an army of robots online.  That sounds more fun than it actually is.

5.) Good Cop.  Bad Cop

I’d love to give you guys access to FaceBook but the IT guy says there’s a danger of viruses.  No one’s buying it.  Even if it’s true, people aren’t stupid.  Why have 400 million users globally invited this huge Facebook threat into their homes.  Unless you’re working at the Pentagon, the threat from Facebook is minimal.

There’s no real right answer here.  Obviously each one of these approaches has flaws.  It’s best to use a mix of some of them.  Let people use Social Media.  Encourage them communicate aspects of their work.  Stay involved and active yourself.  Gently push and pull people in different directions.  Social media is becoming like an online society and society has unwritten rules.  The more you, as a manager, are involved in that society the more it will reflect your own workplace.

And just like the real world, you have to realize that you cannot control every aspect of employees’ lives.  Even at work.  We give leeway to professionals all the time realizing that our personal and professional lives sometimes overlap.  That life.  And work is part of life.

Now that Tim has laid the foundation for his job search, it’s time to raise his online profile by engaging and participating on the social media platforms so that others recognize his talent, intelligence and potential.

Most professionals start their social media participation on LinkedIn. It’s the social media platform most closely associated with professional pursuits and employment, so it makes sense for Tim to start there also. While Tim has completed the essential task of creating and populating his personal profile, even securing recommendations, the next step is just as important: join professional Groups to engage with others in your field.

Perform a quick search on your profession – sales, marketing, finance, healthcare – and review the list of Groups available. Narrow your search by inserting your city’s name in the search string. “Cleveland Networking” returns a much more precise list than the broader term “Networking.”

Then simply join some Groups. Visit their pages to see what types of conversations they’re leading. Find one that’s interesting to you and join the conversation. Provide your opinion, your insight and your expertise to the topic of the day. Become visible.

Do the same on Facebook. Search for professional groups that interest you, become a Fan and follow their posts, adding your own comments regularly.

If you’re new to Twitter, visit twellow.com where Twitter users are indexed by their professions and specialties. With a click you can follow the thought leaders in any field and start receiving their tweets in your twitter stream. Click over to their Twitter profile to see who they follow and who’s following them, then follow the same people and start engaging with these professionals.

It won’t take long for your name to be recognized and for you to develop relationships with successful, networked professional in your industry who have the capacity to inform you of job openings and introduce you to others who can help you in your job search.

It’s understandable why most job seekers think that their resume is their most important written job search tool. After all, they’ve heard throughout their professional lives that the resume is universally demanded by virtually every company  engaged in the hiring process. So it’s natural that most people associate resumes with landing their next job.

Although it’s true that your resume will likely play an important role in your job search it’s best used only when you’re applying for a specific position. After all, that’s the purpose of a resume – to articulate your background, skills, abilities and credentials – with the hopes of obtaining an interview.

Sending out resumes blindly in the hopes of attracting attention will likely result only in high postage expenses, not any job offers. Studies repeatedly confirm that over 80% of jobs – especially skilled jobs – aren’t filled from responses to online or newspaper ads, but from personal networking with friends, family and current or former employees at the hiring company. It’s these contacts that get you in the door and face to face with the hiring manager.

Not all of these contacts are interested enough to read your whole resume, but they do want an understanding of your professional capabilities and background. The best way to provide them with this information: your bio.

Brief Biography

Your online bio can provide you with substantial leverage during your networking activities. If written effectively, it will convey  your background in a crisp narrative format before, during or after your networking meetings, providing just enough detail to garner interest and generate further inquiries.

Benefits

Your bio should provide a readable and concise description of your professional background to anyone who want to check you out online. It’s much more conversational than a resume and doesn’t require a significant level of effort to read and absorb. Written in the third person and without the rigid structure of a resume, you bio is much more readable and conversational than a resume.

The bio is also useful for those job seekers who don’t with to announce their intentions to pursue new job opportunities. While posting a resume online announces your intentions, your online bio is simply a convenient resource that informs any interested person of your professional capabilities and experience.

How to write your bio

Most people have difficulty writing about themselves and have trouble even getting started. A quick way to jumpstart your own bio is to visit LinkedIn profiles or blogs of people you admire. Read their personal profiles until you find one that you think can serve as a model for your own. I’m not suggesting that you simply cut and paste their profile to your own, but you can use their profile as a template for your bio, substituting your own professional details and personal skills.

At a minimum, your online bio should include a brief paragraph summarizing your profession and overall expertise. You’ll also want to add specific career highlights and significant accomplishments in your field. Ideally, you’ll also include some details concerning your professional philosophy and approach to your business. Details that illuminate how you differ in your professional capacity from everyone else in your industry. Include your education credentials and any type of professional associations that you belong to that can embellish your professional prestige. Finally, humanize yourself with a brief comment on your personal hobbies and pursuits – as long as they don’t have the potential to alienate any prospective employers.

Once your bio is complete, you need to paste in into every social media platform where you participate, on your blog’s About page and on your Google profile (don’t have a Google profile yet? Get one now at Google Profile)

The Wall Street Journal published an article yesterday that described how many major search firms actually keep a blacklist of candidates that they would never consider for any job opening.

Typically, these firms add candidates to their blacklist who have exaggerated their qualifications, pitted recruiting firms against each other, received negative references or performed badly during the search process.

Previously, having your name blacklisted at a single search firm may not have affected your ability to find a new position, but with the proliferation of social media platforms, including industry specific social networking sites, your poor behavior won’t be limited to a single recruiter, but has the potential to be broadcast to a national network of recruiters.

Recruiters spend their entire day on the phone and online chatting with prospective candidates, checking references and engaging with other recruiters. They are professional communicators who have the ability to broadly disseminate negative information about any candidate who lied to them, falsified their accomplishments or behaved deceptively.

Job seekers often feel pressured to enhance their education and their professional achievements to merit consideration for a new job. However, it’s easier than ever to verify the details of a candidate’s background and once caught in a lie you may destroy the prospect of being considered by any recruiting firm. For years, perhaps forever.

The same social media platforms that allow you to reach recruiters all around the country with a single tweet also enable them to check on your qualifications and professionalism. If you’re honest and open, you’ll have nothing to worry about.

1. your education doesn’t match your claims – it’s amazing how many job applicants lie about their education credentials, despite the ease with which these can be checked. And some people make it easier than ever when their Facebook or LinkedIn profile lists an education background that doesn’t match the information on their resume. If there’s any discrepancy across your profiles, it will appear as though you’re lying. Be complete and completely truthful.
2. photos of you in compromising situations – you’ve gone through the interview process, and the hiring decision comes down to you and one other candidate. You have a photo page displaying you chugging from a beer bong, passed out at a friend’s party and carousing in Cancun. The other candidate only presents circumspect shots of gatherings with family and friends, without any hint of drunkenness or out of control behavior. Which of you is the safest hire? It’s essential that you sanitize your photos, untag yourself from unsavory photos in friends’ photo albums and set up privacy constraints that restrict access to your personal photos. Examine your profile as an employer would and remove any item that could be compromising.
3. lie about qualifications – again, your online personal profiles frequently contain a wealth of information about previous jobs, dates of employment and job titles. If they don’t match the information you provided your potential employer, you’re out of contention. It’s also important to know that if you have a blog – whether personal or professional – your prospective employer will likely read that also to gauge your appropriateness for hire. And if your blog posts about your job don’t match the details you provided the potential employer, you’ll be perceived as deceptive.
4. badmouth employer or staff - the Internet is forever. Too many job seekers forget that inconvenient fact. The blog post, tweet or comment that you wrote last year blasting your former employer, revealing personal details about your boss or abusing your coworkers will never disappear. Intemperate comments will raise questions about your judgment, discretion and temperament, so be careful in your postings. When in doubt, don’t hit “Submit.”
5. discriminatory comments – any comments that you make online that can be interpreted as discriminatory, racist or sexist can eliminate you immediately from consideration. It doesn’t matter if you think you were being funny, sarcastic or ironic. Companies are risk averse, and simple won’t take the risk of hiring someone with discriminatory attitudes. Any comment you make in a public forum, like Twitter, or on your Facebook wall will be reviewed and judged so it’s best to refrain entirely from making incendiary or offensive comments.

There are ways to protect personal contact on most social media platforms. Facebook, which contains the most personal information, allows you to determine precisely who gets to view your wall posts, profile information and photos. Users can create multiple lists of friends, some who have all access permission while others have restricted access to a small subset of your online content. Learn how to manage your privacy settings, sanitize your online photos and, above all, simply tell the truth.

So, how can you build your personal network and increase your chances of finding your ideal job?  Here are some quick tips:

1. Create a blog that centers around your professional expertise. Then fill it with posts. Done right, your blog will be more effective than any resume in communicating the level of your professional knowledge and insight.
2. Make sure the name or tagline of your blog clearly conveys your special professional skills.
3. Create a series of posts that teach me something about what you do. Include pictures, diagrams, samples and even a portfolio of your most effective work product. No matter what your specialty, from driving a truck to running a hedge fund, there is plenty of material you can create to educate others.
4. Read and comment on other bloggers’ sites. Every day.
5. Let the other bloggers in your industry know you exist. Send them your posts. Start a conversation. And ask them to add your blog to their blogroll so the search engines find you and rank you.
6. Go to industry events. Go online and check the monthly schedules for all the professional organizations in your area. Then attend with a pocketful of business cards that includes all of  your social media contact information.
7. When you meet someone you’d like to work for, follow them on every social media channel. Read their blog, follow their tweets, read their LinkedIn profile. Learn everything you can about them so you can stay in touch and send them articles and links you know they’ll be interested in. Help them and there’s a good chance they’ll help you.
8. Follow staffing and recruiting professionals on Twitter, facebook and LinkedIn. Their blog posts and tweets are full of useful information that can help you refine your resume, hone your interviewing skills and alert you to job openings.
9. Clean up your online networking profiles to ensure that there is nothing embarrassing or potentially offensive. No photos of you drinking, smoking or engaged in any potentially disturbing activity. Untag yourself from any potentially offensive photos that exist on any of your friends’ photo pages. Remove any offensive or vulgar language. Then modify your privacy settings so your most personal information remains private and unseen except by your closest friends.
10. Search for and connect with similar professionals on all the major social media platforms. Start conversations with them, participate in online forums and contribute to their groups. Create a Twitter list that includes only these professionals so you stay focused like a laser beam.

Remember, by leveraging these social media platforms, you get a chance to reach not only your contacts, but the entire constellation of contacts that are just one or two degrees removed from you. And you never know who’s hiring.