OXFORD

DEVELOPING YOUR CAREER IDEAS
B
FINDING OTHER LEADS
Social media is of course alive with opportunities, not least because many organisations now use Facebook and Twitter as key
communication tools to promote themselves. Social media are increasingly used to advertise competitions, presentations and
events, open days and even posting fulltime and internship opportunities. Connect online – but remember to set your privacy
settings carefully and have a profile picture and an email address that doesn’t alarm potential employers.
t TWITTER: Use the search facility to find people who
mention their employment or university in their profile
and send a short, publicly visible, question to someone
asking for their tips or advice. See who prominent
individuals or organisations ‘follow’ to give you other
ideas about who to contact.
f FACEBOOK: Post a message to your personal contacts
letting them know what you are most interested in and
asking for recommendations for people to contact. As
with LinkedIn, you might also find relevant groups to
join. Increasingly, you can also follow recruiters’ pages
to find out about events and competitions, vacancies
and deadlines and follow current employees. Some
employers (eg, the Fast Stream Civil Service) have used
Facebook to invite questions from prospective applicants.
INDUSTRY WEBSITES: Many employer websites include
‘about us’ or ‘staff team’ pages where you can learn
more about who works there (sometimes there is also
an email address). You might be able to contact people
directly to ask for advice, but if their email address isn’t
published, you could email the generic address you find
with ‘FAO’ (For Attention Of) and the name of the person
you’ve researched at the top – or consider looking them
up on LinkedIn and approaching them that way.
Reid Hoffman
Co-founder of LinkedIn
“One of the challenges in networking is everybody
thinks it’s making cold calls to strangers. Actually,
it’s the people who already have strong trust
relationships with you, who know you’re dedicated,
smart, a team player, who can help you.”
WHAT RESOURCES COULD I USE?
OXFORD CAREERS NETWORK
www.careers.ox.ac.uk/ocn
LINKEDIN
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] Academia.Edu
] ResearchGate
] Hiive
“The door is open, so gather your courage
and your questions and join the conversation.”
www.careers.ox.ac.uk 19