Everyone knows about networking face to face. You meet someone, you chat, and you build contacts and learn about employment leads or the names of other people who can assist you with your career goals.

Social Networking on the Web

Now social networking sites on the Internet are changing how people communicate and gain information about employers and job candidates. Sites such as www.myspace.com, www.friendster.com, www.facebook.com, www.jobster.com, www.ryze.com, and www.linkedin.com, to name a few popular resources, provide personal Web pages and personal and professional information about individuals which can include their job titles and where they work.

Online networking is very proactive and means you actively seek out and introduce yourself to someone who might work at a company you aspire to be part of. You can also seek people with a certain title to learn more about their professional duties or their company and perhaps give you an inside edge on getting your foot in the door at their firm.

Typically, you can join a social networking site on your own, or someone already a part of the network invites you to join. Joining simply means you set up a profile viewable to others who then have the opportunity to contact you as well. Social networking sites that are not business oriented often showcase an individual's hobbies and lifestyle. Be careful what you include on such sites since many employers now go to these sites to see if a candidate is profiled there. On some occasions, individuals have included inappropriate photographs or comments that may reflect poorly on their consideration for employment. Be careful what you include on such sites, since you do not want to be blind-sided by digital dirt. Additionally, do yourself a favor and Google your name. Simply type your name into the search engine and see if you or others with your name show up. You can remove anything of your own that might jeopardize your search. This also allows you to discover if there are others with your name that might be mistaken for you if an employer goes through this same process.

Blogging

Blogs are online journals. Some bloggers write about their lives, some about their jobs, and still others write about interests or simply the mundane. You can go to www.blogger.com to read blogs and gain a better understanding of their wide scope and subject matter. For job search purposes, you might visit a blog site and read what someone has to say about your anticipated line of work or a prospective company as an employer. Recruiters sometimes search blogs to target candidates with special interests or expertise in a specific field. The same way some people like to read a daily column or someone else's diary, blogs have loyal fans, and the community of bloggers continues to grow. Again, if you choose to maintain a blog, be sure that what you write won't jeopardize your chances of getting the job you want. You never know who will be reading it!