Career Advancement with Social Networking Technology

Scott Brown

We hear it over and over again. It's not about what you know, in any case who you know. If you're like many people, you probably have at least 200 people in your rolodex. Having contacts is one thing. Making the most of those relationships is another challenge altogether.

With busy schedules, effectively staying in touch with people and using connections to acquire doors opened is difficult. Just within the past few months, technology has been developed to meet these challenges and help people make the most of their social networks. This technology is appropriately called "social networking software."

Of course the most basic technology in this area is having an electronic address book. Microsoft Outlook is basically the industry standard plan to use. Sparta Social Networks After inputting your contacts in Outlook, you can synchronize with a personal digital assistant (like the Palm pilot). You can correspondingly use Outlook to interface with any of the major social networking applications out there, including all of the ones mentioned in this article.

Keeping in Touch

If you have 300 contacts in your address book however you only keep in touch with 40 of them on a commonplace basis, the remaining 260 contacts are in danger of passing "stale." Think of what happens when you flip all through your card file or rolodex and come across a concord you haven't heard from for a couple years. Unless you knew the person well, chances are you'll just throw out the card. You may not ever remember how you met them!

A social networking software program called RelationshipSecure was developed to address this clear-cut problem. Online Social Networking It provides several presence that help you bolster your existing relationships and keep them from getting stale. It provides a verification feature that lets you send out e-mail mailings to your contacts asking them if their enlightenment is correct. If it isn't, they can make any changes needed and your Outlook address book is updated automatically. It furthermore lets you send out other mailings like Birthday and Anniversary e-greeting cards.

To find out additional about RelationshipSecure, visit www.RelationshipSecure.com.

Expanding your Network

While RelationshipSecure is a powerful tool for maintaining your existing relationships, other companies have developed technology to help you expand your network of contacts. These concepts aren't mutually exclusive: in case, it makes sense that you'd want to keep in touch with people so that the relationship won't have gone cold by the time you have to ask them for an introduction, a job, a meeting, etc.

LinkedIn.com is one of the most esteemed services for expanding your network by getting introduced to other people who can help you move ahead in your career. How it works is this: you enter your contacts' email addresses or import them from Outlook. LinkedIn then gives you a window into people your contacts know and depending on their privacy settings, the ability to concord people who may be proficient to help you. LinkedIn.com is most esteemed among executives and other considerable-level professionals since of the exclusive nature of their service and its powerful privacy presence.

Ryze.com is another service similar to LinkedIn.com, although with fewer privacy controls. It is not as popular among executives in any case it's worth checking out, distinctively if you want to network with people who aren't in LinkedIn's demographic.

Reaching Recruiting Contacts

Albeit these tools provide a powerful way for you to tap your existing networking resources, it may be the case that you have to reach out of your network to find someone who can help you. I recommend using a service like ResumeArrow.com to ascertain your resume in front of recruiters and employers you wouldn't be capable to reach otherwise.

About the Author
Scott Brown is the author of the Job Search Handbook (http://www.JobSearchHandbook.com). As editor of the HireSites weekly newsletter on job searching, Scott has written many articles on the subject. Social Networking Technology He wrote the Job Search Handbook to provide job seekers with a conclusive yet easy to use guide to finding out a job effectively.