This Week In Search Marketing Staffing – 1/07/09

Happy New Year and Welcome Back to This Week in Search Marketing Staffing.

As we move closer and closer to a new president, everyone is making their guesses as to what President-Elect Obama will do in his first 100 days.  ComputerWorld believes that an economic stimulus package, expected early in the year, could create thousands of IT Jobs.  If funds are made available in the right places it is possible that the stimulus plan could create as many as 300,000 high-tech IT positions.  Professionals looking to take advantage of this situation should show their employers how their skill sets could be used in potential projects.  Many of the new jobs will require a combination of unique skill sets which will require expertise in at least one technical field.  While all this is still hypothetical, Obama’s “Pro-Tech Agenda” supports the thought that IT will continue to flourish in 2009.

Social media is quickly making it’s way into every aspect of our lives.  Whether it is staying in touch via facebook, getting the hottest news from Digg, or settling a friendly debate by looking something up on wikipedia, social media tools are helping us in new ways everyday.  If you are currently looking for a job, social media can also help with that.  Mashable recently published their 7 Secrets to Getting Your Next Job Using Social Media.  Their 7 secrets are:

1. Conduct a people search instead of a job search
2. Use attraction-based marketing to get job offers
3. Be proactive on Twitter
4. Capitalize on Linkedin
5. Advertise Your brand using Adwords and Facebook Social Ads
6. Construct a video resume and upload it to YouTube
7. Subscribe to blogs that have job listings

Mashable breaks down the specifics of each of their “secrets” and how you can use them to successfully find your next job.

If you are hesitant to believe that someone can actually land a job using social media, then you should take a look at Scott Orth’s Social Media Job Hunt Experiment on SEMpdx.  After being laid off, Scott set out to find his next job using social media; facebook, twitter, linkedin, and his personal website.  Initially Scott received the best responses using twitter, but was disappointed with his results using Linkedin and facebook.  Quickly Scott learned in order to successfully use social media lock in his next job, he would have to stay persistent.  By remaining vigilent Scott was able to make some great connections and eventually landed a new position within one week of beginning his experiment.  Scott summed up what he learned from his experiment in his final post, Living Under a Bridge – Final Wrap Up.

Looking for a new skill to help boost your professional stock?  Look into learning virtualization, which is quickly becoming one of the hottest, most demanded skills in IT.  The VP of Dice.com, reports that while overall the job count on their IT job board has dropped 12% since January 2008, the number of virtualization jobs has increased nearly 40% in the same period.  Currently Dice.com has nearly 1000 jobs requesting VMware skills, and another 600 looking for general virtualization skills.

Dave Harry, of Huomah and Reliable-SEO, recently put together a great list of SEO resources in his post, SEO Higher Learning.  In an effort to promote the concept of continued learning within SEO, Dave lists over a hundred different resources to help search marketers better understand some of the more technical aspects of search engines.  By understanding the fundamentals a good search marketer will be able to make more educated decisions when faced with new problems.  Dave’s list includes a number of books, free courses, research papers, videos, patents, journals, tools, and blogs.  If you can make it through all of Dave’s resources without learning anything, you are probably lying.

That's it for this week.  Check back next week for another update.