Are You Searchable?

If you consider yourself as very good at what you do but you are difficult to find, it is possible that you are missing out on some juicy career opportunities. You are no different from a very beautiful website (Aesthetically that is) but could not be found through the search engines. You will become  a beautiful secret that is kept from the world. The good thing about it  is that very few people will badger you about an opportunity. The bad thing is opportunity searching becomes one way, that is you are not allowing opportunities to find you.

What is so good about being searchable? I can count a number of reasons why you should be. Here's one; if you are as good as you should be, people will line up to see you and find out how they (their companies) can benefit from you. This gives you a lot of job and career opportunity choices. Job offers will give you a good idea about the price you command in the market. Most importantly, you don't have to stay in a job you hate when you have options of finding a better job with a better boss and team. See Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand


How do you make yourself searchable? That is not really hard to do nowadays with all the social networking sites and online job boards around. However, even if you have tons of social networking memberships but do not have the savvy to make your skills and talent searcheable, the only people who will find you online are the people who are using your name to find you in Google. That is not what I want to talk about here.

If you want people who are looking for the kinds that have your talent, skills and experience, here a re a couple of things you should do.

Make yourself accessible through various job sites. The biggest in the Philippines are Jobstreet and JobsDB. There are several up and coming sites but these are the two you should not do without. Keep your profile comprehensive and updated. Your skills and experience. should be properly stated in the slots allocated for them. Why? because those are tagged. When searchers like me do their search those information are called out.

Keep an updated profile in Linkedin. A hoard of head hunters are on consistent prowl for talents there. They use all sorts of schemes to mine linkedin of potential employees. If you don't have a linkedin account now, you are missing out on an opportunity to be found. Register now and painstakingly work on your profile. There are other social networks of the linkedin kind, find them and try them out as well.

Don't get cute with descriptions such as creative, self starter, resourceful, team player and other nonsense. They really don't mean anything to recruiters. What you should write in your profile are major accomplishments that define your career or your professional experience. That's really what they want to know.


Mind what you say online. I cannot stress this enough. When people find you on Twitter, Facebook, or your blog what they should see is someone they would want to hire, not a whiner, a slacker or a quarrelsome fellow. This is why it's important to be mindful of how you come across in the social web.

Take good care of your image on the web. To those who do not know you will judge you by what they see online.