Are you in job market? Sick of every blog-byte cramming down your throat that you have to get out there and network? Feel like your traditional networking efforts have turned into a self-destructive waste of time?

Online Social Networking (OSN), a form of viral marketing, is a better way to hook up to opportunity. Done right, it’ll do wonders for your self-esteem and warp-speed your contact development.

Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that’s used to facilitate and encourage people to pass along a marketing message. Comparable to throwing a match into a parched forest, resulting wildfire rapidly propagates itself as initial targets pass promotion onto others. Achieve same results through OSN and watch your career search efforts heat up.

Online social networking has same element of exponential marketing. Used in a job hunt, OSN by its infrastructure eliminates many of your hassles of connecting with people of influence, and vice-versa, but not in way you think.

Andrea Connell, Director of Marketing for R.L. Stevens & Associates Inc, http://interviewing.com/ a leading international career marketing firm headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, explains, “The viral capabilities of online social networking works best when it’s designed around your ability to give, not your need to receive.” You’ll reap better rewards when you share what you know with others and help them to succeed first and foremost. Focus on their needs over yours.

A seasoned contributor to several of popular online social networks, Connell regularly offers mini-bites of free job search advice to inquiring minds. Some of those people end up becoming company clients. “Online social networking is one of many multiple marketing strategies you should use to expedite your career campaign,” she says. “When OSN is used simultaneously with other personal marketing tactics, you position yourself as an expert in your field and widen your exposure to opportunity and decision makers.”

There may be great leaders and managers in corner office where you work, but many people actually do work for a jerk or something worse. Unfortunately, those who do work for a jerk often wonder what to do about it.

When you’d rather not run boss over with your car, put leadership seminar brochures on his or her desk, or call in sick Monday through Friday, consider these concepts:

1. Your manager has marching orders delivered by jerk above him. That stuff really does roll down hill. Have empathy.