The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) 2009 Career Services Benchmark Survey for Four-Year Colleges and Universities lists career counseling as the number one service offered by collegiate career centers. Teaching students how to conduct a job search is a crucial aspect of the career counseling process.

I was exploring the twittersphere this morning when I came upon a terrific blog post about how one savvy communicator strategically used social media for a job search. Trish Freshwater was hired for her current position at Sodexo, Inc. because of her social media endeavors. Freshwater used LinkedIn to post "relevant information and recommendations from former colleagues." She also joined a LinkedIn group for Sodexo careers.

Twitter was the next social media site on her journey to being hired by Sodexo. Freshwater followed key Sodexo employees in the areas where she wanted to work. She engaged with them via retweets and posted tweets that were relevant to the communications position that she wanted. It took about a month of social media engagement before Freshwater was offered a position as the senior communications manager for Sodexo's Talent Acquisition Group.

Freshwater was recently featured in a segment on using social media for job searches on "Good Morning America." Note that she had only been in her job for two weeks prior to GMA's feature.

Freshwater's story is a case study in how individuals can use social media in their job search. Do you work in career services and have a social media success story? What social media tools/sites are you sharing with your students?

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