Job seekers and HR managers are getting into social media tools. In bad economy, visibility matters and social network tools like Twitter, Facebook, Orkut etc provide network access.

Twitter is a latest kid on the block and it’s short SMS like text messaging has made many fans (We are also on Twitter if you want to follow us there – CodeMunch ). Lately Twitter is getting popular for job seekers to reach out to prospective employers. Wall Street Journal writes about this new development, which is getting good attention in worsening job market:

Looking for a new job, Alexa Scordato didn’t email or call her contacts about possible openings. Instead, she messaged them via the social-networking Web site Twitter.com.

Her brief message: “Hey there! Looking for a Social Media job up in Boston. Are you guys doing any entry level hires?”

Within a week, she had an interview. Within two weeks, she had a job.

The site, which lets users publish supershort updates of what they’re doing, is a virtual meeting ground where a range of communities — from moms to media professionals — come to converse informally.

It’s been criticized as a site for sharing mundane details about everyday activities. But people like 22-year-old Ms. Scordato, who used Twitter to privately message some people she’d met at a conference, show the site can be more than that.

“I would guess that if I had just sent them a long email with my résumé, I might not have gotten a response as fast as I did,” says Ms. Scordato, who was hired by Mzinga, a Boston-area company that helps businesses use social technology.

Clearly diversifying your social network presence in leading social networks helps in building personal brand. Focused effort in establishing expertise goes a long way in getting into good books of people you want to impress.

Follow us on codemunch. We will be looking at Twitter APIs and thinking how we can help our job seekers in their career planning.

Fascinating post on EscapeBlog on how President Elect Barack Obama managed his career.

For  graduates just coming out of colleges and finding themselves challenged due to dire economy, there is plenty of food for thought here:

Barack Obama never escaped from Corporate America. But he has made many courageous and non-traditional career choices — all of which helped guide him to the White House.  He graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School and took a job as a community organizer. “Community organizer” was certainly not the most lucrative or prestigious choice to make (just ask Sarah Palin). Obama could have easily opted for a more traditional path and accepted a position at a law firm or as a corporate attorney. I’m sure many wise people advised him that he would never make any money as a community organizer.

But Obama followed his principles and his passions. They led him to the Illinois Senate, and then to the U.S. Senate (after an unsuccessful run for the U.S. House of Representatives). And now, he’s preparing to move his family and new puppy into the White House. Oh yeah, and  along the way, he also became a bestselling author (so much for those predictions that he’d never make any money).

So what is Obama’s lesson for career changers? Don’t let anybody tell you that your dream is impossible or unrealistic. Your goal may very well be a long shot, but that doesn’t mean you can’t achieve it. It may take a lot of hard work and some temporary sacrifices and discomfort, but so what? Nothing worth achieving is easy.

Now step back and think. Be unrealistic. Hard work and sacrifices.

Facebook provide you lots of fun with your friends. Considering the amount of time we spend on it, it now makes sense to cleasn up our profile a bit

To make sure you look good when company or recruiter runs into your Facebook profile, we have rolled out MY RESUME. My Resume is an application developed by CodeMunch team for Facebook platform.

CodeMunch is a Web 2.0 Social Resume Builder. Where you can get your resume on your profile by just filling some relevant information. By using this application you can send your resume to any of your friends. Sharing and adding review to your friend’s resume is just one click away.

My Resume will play a very important role in your life and resume building. Your all Facebook friends can see your resume and they can forward your resume for suitable position. Build your social resume on Facebook, It will build your career.

“Find a job you love and you will never work a day in your life.” 
– Confucius

We all look for such a job but it is very difficult to get such job, not because they don’t exist but because we are not able to find it. Positions given on job boards, papers may not be what you are looking for. Enter social media. You must be using social media since long for making new friends, finding old colleagues and other purpose, but have you tried to use it for making friend. Social media has a huge potential and realizing this employers are moving now to social media to find right candidate. In order to make social media work for you it is essential that you make your resume social.

With social resume you can make employer see your resume and contact you freely. You can also add your resume on social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut with our application CodeMunch and can make this platform work for you. To create social resume just create your profile (which is very easy and hardly takes 5 minute). Now you can see profile of all members, can contact them, get your resume rated and rate others resume. One most important thing is your participation on forums. The more you participate, stronger your identity is. Also you can be easily discovered because of active participation. Add this resume on your Facebook and Orkut profile and start getting your dream job opportunities from your personal network and jobs forums on facebook and orkut.

Good positions are unadvertised – you need to be in the known.

These days submitting resume to potential employers has become a piece of cake. With increasing job sites and companies advertising their needs on their web sites, you are just a few clicks away to sending your resume. But, that does not mean it gets read and noticed. The more easy this gets, the more careless the candidates get. It’s not about how many companies you have applied to, it’s about how serious you are to work for a given company. It’s important to choose the company, study the company, align your interests with the companies long term goal. If these are not well aligned, very soon one will feel the stress, as passion would be lacking.

Key is to differentiate yourself from the crowd. Remember, the HR who sorts through thousands of resume for a said job will spend less than 1 minute per resume. Unless he/she finds something interesting and creative, the resume would go into the trash bin. If you are a fresher and don’t have much experience to show, you got to get creative.

Not having work experience does not mean you are not intellectually and technically sound.

This is where CodeMunch can help you differentiate from thousands of resumes. When you actively participate in groups, start intelligent threads, respond to others queries. One is not only becoming more technically savvy, but one is also proving to the world that he/she can tackle situations and get the said job done.

Add to it, the added advantage of having friends review your resume, rate and comment on it. Just another way to know where you would stand in the crowd. These could be friends or potential employers seeing how the community views you.

Happy munching!