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CARLSBAD, CA/RICHARDSON, TX (July 20, 2011) – Google+ has joined Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and BeKnown as the latest social media tool in the job seekers’ arsenal. According to a new report on CareerCast.com, Google+ allows you to keep your social life separate from your professional life and is a great way to connect with potential employers and find job leads. However, this hot new tool is still in beta so it’s only available by invitation from people who have already joined. 

If you’re lucky enough to score an early invite, Google+, unlike other social media sites, allows you to control which parts of your profile each of your connections sees.

“Through the use of Circles, Google+ allows you to choose who sees each of your posts, photos, and videos,” explains Tony Lee, publisher, CareerCast.com. “You can also add potential employers and contacts to your circles without needing them to ’friend’ you back.”

Another highlight of Google+ is the ability to edit your posts once they are published. Even one of the site’s drawbacks -- your newsfeeds or “Streams” can be re-shared with friends outside your circle – can be overcome with a tool that allows you to disable re-sharing of posts. You can also control who sees your photos and which photos they’ll be able to access.  This way, a potential employer will never see the photos of you doing Jell-O shots at your neighbor’s barbecue. 

The “Sparks” feature of Google+ is a feed of current news stories related to interests that you select. 

“Keeping abreast of company and industry news is a great way to find leads and research employers before an interview,” says Mr. Lee.

“Hangouts” is Google+’s version of group video chat.  While this is a fun way to connect with your friends, it can also potentially be very useful for long-distance interviews.  Being able to do a video interview with a recruiter or hiring manager from the comfort of your home can be a huge savings and timesaver. While the kinks are still being worked out, this feature has the great potential for the future of long-distance job interviewing. 

Google+ is still developing its company-specific pages, so for now, it’s best to research a company on other services. For job seekers, the bottom line is that no matter what social media network you are using, make sure you maintain control of your brand across the Internet. Whether you are using Google+ or any other social media application, take some time to surf the web and see what a potential employer might find about you.  Not taking control of your brand could cost you in a big way.

For more information or to read the full report, visit http://www.careercast.com/career-news/how-google-plus-can-help-your-job-search.

About CareerCast.com

CareerCast.com, created by Adicio, is a job search portal that offers extensive local, niche and national job listings from across North America, job-hunting, career-management and HR-focused editorial content, videos and blogs, and provides recruiters with the ability to post jobs directly to more than 800 niche career sites. CareerCast.com also compiles the Jobs Rated Report (www.jobsrated.com), where 200 jobs across North America are ranked based on detailed analysis of specific careers factors.