Facebook? LinkedIn? Both?

Yes, we've had many threads on social networks, and I started to post this on one of those. I preferred to start fresh, hoping to avoid some of the baggage on existing threads.

A few who have followed my search for employment since September tell me I should join Facebook. Others suggest LinkedIn. Some endorse both. Many of the Facebook vs. LinkedIn debates I've found are a year or two old, largely outdated because of recent changes to both sites. I figured this wouldn't be a bad place to ask for advice because of our (mostly) similar backgrounds.

I'm not so much concerned with reconnecting with old friends as I am with enlarging my professional sphere and doing what apparently is necessary to enhance my chances of finding a job or keeping my name circulating. If I hear from someone from high school or college, great. If not, fine. I'm not planning to spend hours a day updating my status or sharing my dinner plans with people. I do wish to benefit from what people are telling me is a great networking tool: the Internet.

So, which one? Both? And why?

Start slowly and gradually enhance? Full-court press from the start? What mistakes have you made that I could learn from? What does Facebook offer that LinkedIn can't, and vice versa?

Post a resume? Story links? PDFs? Write some "blog" entries?

And ... privacy ... if it's as big an issue as people are telling me, then why put yourself out there in the first place? Different security levels for different "friends" on your page? And is that much site management really worth the payoff?

I'm open to what people have to say. Don't worry about showing me links to other threads on here. I've seen them all. And please, no Twitter talk. One thing (or two) at a time. I'm more curious to know about Facebook vs. LinkedIn. I'm certain I'm asking the right people for my professional needs.

Thanks for whatever help you can provide. I'm eager to learn from your experiences.

 

If you want a job, Linkedin.

Everything else, Facebook.

 

You should do both, just because you never know which is preferred by the potential employer who's doing the looking. The outplacement/transition service they gave us when I got laid off seems to think LinkedIn is the shit -- one guy said they look to the "recommendations" as your official references.

They also say potential employers will look you up on all the social networking sites. See if you post a lot of pictures of you getting hammered all the time, whether you are overly active (10,000 friends = you spend too much time on facebook and too little doing your job), that kind of thing.

 

That's what I heard a year ago, when I still had a job. Lately, I'm hearing things have changed enough on both sites to make that advice a tad outdated and overly simplistic. Am I hearing wrong?

 

I'd suggest joining both. If you're judicious about what you put up, it can be of benefit.

Having said that, here are some specific suggestions for Facebook. If you know you're going to add people whom you'd like for professional contacts and you have those drunken pictures, look into creating a separate category for work contacts. Create limits for what parts of your profile the work contacts see. The same holds true for relatives if you don't want, say, your Aunt Edna to see you tapping a keg.

If those controls aren't enough, you can always create strict privacy settings that only allow people who aren't on your friends list to see the barest basics. Mine is set up that people see my name and (from what I'm told), that's pretty much it. I also have my account on MySpace set to private.

 

I would do both, but in reality very, very few people I know actually do anything on LinkedIn after they sign up. It's geared to be more of a professional resource than Facebook, but people actually use Facebook.

 

If you post resume information, do you leave things like phone numbers and e-mail addresses off? I'd assume so. I'd also assume you don't want to put your physical address either, but there has to be a way for someone to contact you. Is that a function of the site itself, so you don't have to provide your e-mail address, or is the default contact method your e-mail address, only it's kept private?

 

People can contact you directly through either site without actually knowing your email address.

 

I wouldn't list your contact information, except maybe an e-mail address, on either site. LinkedIn provides a way for members to get in touch with other members through the site -- you can exchange real-life contact information privately, if you wish. Facebook has a private-message function, too.

 

Facebook for fun.

Linkedin for work.

 

But like I said, all that matters is who's doing the looking. Your preferences don't matter.

 

I'm on both. I rarely do much on LinkedIn, but I'm there in case rapid mobilization is necessary. I get quite a few job leads e-mailed to me from a Navy group I'm in, but nothing in journalism because I haven't explored that.

I check Facebook. It's more social for me, but again I haven't needed to test the job market in either market (knock on wood, crossing self, praise be to God). I did relaunch my personal Web site recently, in BLOG! form as much to have a place for my resume/bio as for an outlet for writing (see self-promotion link below). I post links to new entries on Facebook (I could automate it, like I have with Twitter, but you don't want to hear about that).

I know you've had a personal site in the past. For others (and you, if you need to re-establish it), Poynter put out a good piece recently on starting a BLOG! quickly and cheaply:
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=160304

And, I know you don't want to hear about Twitter, but you might want to bookmark the following link. You don't have to sign up for the service, and this is kind of an RSS feed for journalism jobs:
http://twitter.com/themediaishirin
It's UK-based, I believe, but there are a lot of US jobs on it. And they "follow" several other journalism job Twitter accounts.