I'm not a recruiter, HR executive or personal branding "expert". For most of my career I've been either a hiring manager and at times a job seeker. From that perspective I want to share with you some ideas on using social tools to rev up your job search and give you some insight from the hiring side of the desk. No discussion on this topic would be complete without a quick look at personal brand and why it matters in your job search.

If you have an online presence (in other words you don't live under a rock in a dark cave somewhere) you have an online brand. It's that simple, things created digitally on the web have a life of their own and can pop up anywhere. You can delete a pic off the social site but how do you know it wasn't replicated somewhere else? You don't. If you don't monitor and manage your online brand you are taking a big risk in your job search.

As a hiring manager I will at least Google your name, 100% of the time, and I suspect most companies / managers do this as a matter of course. Depending on what I find on google I also usually try MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. You'd be surprised what you can find...or maybe you wouldn't. Honestly none of ...