You can imagine your hearty-ankled, elementary school librarian peering down at you through half moon glasses, that reproachful gaze reminding you that you’ll never be good enough to read chapter books, as she says, “you can’t judge a book by it’s cover.”

It was good advice. Advice that taught generations of us to dig a little deeper and find out more about everything from books to jobs and people. And now that advice is bunk. It’s been thrown by the wayside with everything else that social media has massacred: traditional advertising, old school marketing, and human dignity and discretion.

These days, you judge a book by it’s Facebook page. And if you were thinking that recruiters and HR entities were turning a blind eye to the information so readily available via the interwebs, you would be mistaken.

In their new book, The Web 2.0 Job Finder, Brenda Greene and Coleen Byrne offer insights and recommendations from recruiters and HR departments on how to leverage social media to help find new opportunity, not kill it. They’ve called upon experts and insiders to give sage advice to those looking to navigate the market and build a fruitful network in this expressive and boundary-less new world.

And you’ll never guess which social media man they tapped… Our very own Mike Troiano.

Seeing as how Mike doesn’t even know where HR sits around here, he is able to bring a fresh and human perspective to the book:

“Invest some time in your profile. Upload a picture, for God’s sake. Add a bio. Create some content to give people a sense of who you are, what you can contribute, what you’ll be looking for. Then start to reach out to the people you know. Connect with them, and start the dialogue.”

It sounds so simple, but it seems that when creating our “professional” persona, we freeze up, certain that any modicum of personality or individualism will raise a red flag. But it’s our belief that now is the time that who you are and what you’re about is what gives you an edge. We’re marketing ourselves in an age of full disclosure. By providing too little, you’re polarizing. Too much and you’re a liability. You need to find a balance, and from there you need to leverage your online presence to build a network that brings opportunities to you, while starting conversations that leave a lingering impression on those with whom you’re connected. That’s just what this book is about.

The Web 2.0 Job Finder will be available April 15th. You can preorder from Amazon.com here.

Related articles

• Web 2.0 Is Now Social Media (web2.sys-con.com)
• McKinsey: Web 2.0 Satisfies (customerthink.com)