Leveraging Social Media Profiles to Further Your Career: Part 3 – Pinterest

Although it may not be as well-established with the workforce world as LinkedIn, people are starting to recognize that the ever-growing in popularity Pinterest can be added to the collection of social media platforms utilized in the job search. As an added bonus, it’s really easy (and fun!) to use.

For those graphic designers, photographers, interior designers, web designers, and other artsy folk out there, you can probably already image the extent of personal branding you could do by uploading images of your portfolio into a “My Portfolio” board. But for those of us who aren’t pursuing careers in the fine arts, Pinterest can still be an incredibly powerful platform.

Create a “My Resume” board and upload your resume, logos of companies you’ve worked, logos of schools you’ve attended, and logos of organizations you have volunteered for or partnered with. This is a great way to aggregate yourself into a visual resume and create another social media profile to compliment your resume, video resume, social media profiles, and website.

Create a second board dedicated to pins relevant to your industry or anything that relates to your professional life or dream career. Once you start following the companies you’re interested in working for as well as some of the experts in your field, you’ll get a feel for the types of visual information that would be most relevant and catching to pin.

Consider utilizing your three secret boards to collect information about the companies that you’re interested in applying for or have upcoming interviews at. If you’re at this stage in the hiring process, you should be doing your research on these companies and, if you’re like me, visual information can be a lot easier to remember than text alone.

Similar to your video resume, Pinterest also allows employers to get a glimpse of who you are as a person. But be careful with this! Know that just because a board isn’t labeled your “My Resume” board, it doesn’t mean that an employer won’t look at it.

Now here’s where you can really go for the gold with Pinterest. First, make sure that your settings allow your profile to show up in search engine results. Then, if you pack your Pinterest profile with keywords related to your career, you’ll increase the chances that it shows up in search engine results. Once employers arrive at your Pinterest profile, be sure that they will easily see a pin telling them how to best contact you as well as how to access your Jobma profile, website, LinkedIn profile, and other social media profiles.

So not only can your Pinterest profile be a great self-branding tool, but, if you utilize it properly, it can also be used for SEO purposes and as way to link employers to your other professional platforms.

For more information on social media platforms, read about how Twitter and Linkedin can be utilized in your job search career.