OK, let’s start with some simple questions. Do you use the internet to communicate with friends and family with sites like Facebook or Twitter? Do you maintain a personal blog? Chances are, you have at one time or another taken a sip of the “internet Kool-Aid” and shared your personal life with the masses via social networking. Depending on a few variables, this is either a good thing, or a very bad one. The truth is, whenever you create an account with any social networking site, you have opened yourself to anyone looking to find you – old friends, search engines like Google and even current or future employers.
I’m sure many of you will immediately fear the worst and want to instantly cancel all of your accounts and swear off of the internet for the rest of your life. Don’t Do It! If you can follow a few simple guidelines, you can actually utilize the power of these websites to boost your prospects for and likelihood of getting a new nursing job.
- If you aren’t using any social networking sites – get started to boost your “employability.” Start with Facebook, Twitter or the uber-professional LinkedIn. Want to really focus in on the fact that you’re a nurse? Try a site like MedicalMingle.com which is dedicated to medical professionals and professionals working in physical therapy jobs, OTA jobs, etc.
- In your profile, try to use your real name whenever appropriate. This will help your profiles to display in search results at Google, Yahoo! or Bing when a potential employer searches your name!
- Keep your communication clean. Employers actively search social networking sites and utilize search engines to research prospective employees (as explained in #2) – so if you are participating in salacious gossip, telling jokes in demeaning and poor taste or just cursing like a sailor – it’s time to try a different approach. This isn’t to say you can’t be colorful, but apply a mental filter to your activities: “What would my boss think if he/she read this?”
- Populate your profile with high quality and accurate information about yourself. Call out your status and certifications as a nurse. Talk about your successes and what makes you such a *great* nurse. Think about each and every social networking profile as another opportunity to pitch yourself as a great employee.
This is a point that will be made frequently here at A Nurse’s World – the internet is your friend and ally as a nurse. Learn how to harness the internet, and you will increase your prospects of keeping and/or finding new nursing jobs!
