I have long advocated that leaders need to stay abreast of evolving technology, and tuned to the impact of social media in today’s workplaces. Something interesting happened last week that brought this message home to me, loud and clear, yet again.
LinkedIn is a valuable tool for employers and employees
A young professional male I know was laid off from his job over a year ago due to the current economic recession occurring in Alberta. For over a year, he has been actively seeking new employment, and while he was getting at least a few interviews in the early days of his job search, recently even those have trickled down to almost nothing. That is until last week. He received a message through LinkedIn (the widely-used social media platform that is primarily business and employment-focused) from someone asking if he was still looking for work, and if he could come into an interview the next day. Of course he agreed. But he thought it was odd that this was not an organization that he had reached out to himself, or for that matter one that he had even come across in his months of job search.
During the interview, he discovered that this was an offshore company that, seeking to establish a Canadian presence, had just acquired one of the businesses he had been employed by in the past. In order to ensure an efficient merger and ongoing operations, the company was reaching out to past employees who already had the skills and knowledge that were relevant to this company and situation. And how did they find this former employees? By using the Internet, specifically in his case, LinkedIn. By the end of the day, after over a year of emotional ups-and-downs, this young man had his dream job! Yeah!
Two key points worth considering
Celebrations aside, there are a couple of key points worth noting in this situation. First, if this fellow hadn’t made it a point to create a complete and positive LinkedIn profile for himself, he never would have been found by this organization, let alone got this job. And second, kudos to this offshore company for thinking creatively and drawing upon non-traditional sources to staff their new acquisition. Bottom line, technology and social media were directly responsible for this success story!
So I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Technology and social media have created opportunities for leaders to accomplish their goals, to exert more influence than ever before. Are you accepting this reality, or are you fighting it? What are you doing to embrace technology and social media? What examples do you have to share about how technology and social media have helped you accomplish your business goals? Please share below.