This is a guest post from Elizabeth Williams, the owner of Girl + Camera LLC in Hamilton, New Jersey. In this post Elizabeth explains and demonstrates the advantages of using Foursquare in your job search.

A lot has been written recently about the rise in the popularity of Foursquare, a geolocation-based social networking tool that allows users to check in at different establishments in order to compete for virtual badges and bragging rights to being the most frequent visitor, or mayor, of an establishment. Major brands such as The Wall Street Journal, Pepsi, Starbucks, and MTV have signed on to use the site for everything from a revenue-boosting marketing tool to a virtual punch card.

But businesses don’t wield all the power on Foursquare; it can be a powerful tool for an individual to create a social brand and market themselves at a time where being on top of the latest technology is a considerable advantage over those resistant to changes in communication. And no, I’m not talking about finding a company you want to work for, finding the director of HR’s foursquare user name, and following them all over New York City until they see your portfolio. That’s called stalking.

No, Foursquare can be a powerful tool, when used in a proper social context, for finding your next internship, job, or career, if you know how to do it.

1. Be Their Biggest Fan

Don’t just leverage that mayorship for a badge or a discount at your favorite place. If you’re the mayor, you probably know someone who works at the place you’re trying to get into, so use that to your advantage. Be the mayor of places you want to work, and work will find you via your connections to the staff, who are the first gatekeeper to the holy grail of the Human Resources office.

If you haven’t been getting to know other regulars, staff, and gatekeepers, you need to start right now! Introduce yourself as the mayor of their business on Foursquare! If they know what it is, they probably already know who you are, and you can go from there. If they have no idea what that means, educate them! Whip out your Droid or iPhone and get them up to speed with the 21^st century. Build a relationship, build rapport, and you’ll find yourself getting early tips on hiring practices, positions opening soon, and other insider information.

Better still, if you’ve built that rapport, you can just ASK for a job. As a creative professional, photographer slash blogger, I would love to find a marketing major to intern with me for the summer to take over the hassles of doing the “running the business” work of being a full-time professional photographer and part-time blogger. Let the interns come up with ad campaigns, research the best places to advertise, network to find business owners willing to pimp my business, and let me get down to the business of what I like to do: take pictures, tweet, and blog.

2. Get a Foot in the Door

Still not king…or mayor? Then find out who is and become their friend!

If the mayor has been at the location more than a dozen times, odds are that they’re an employee – or on really good terms with one. This is your end run around any gatekeeper standing in your way.

For example, I’m the Foursquare mayor of the boutique fitness studio where I do yoga and boot camp training, Sphericality.  (http://www.sphericality.com) Because I’m there so often, I’ve built a good rapport with the staff and am completely invested in the business’ well-being. I’ve introduced a reporter to the owner for a feature story and referred new clients back. If they need a yoga instructor or receptionist and I know someone who’s looking for that job, I’m going to recommend them.

But befriending the mayor isn’t just for studios, cafes, or retail work. Want to get into a government internship? Get to know the mayor! If you’re friendly enough with them on Foursquare, move the relationship to Twitter, mention you’d love to work for the government, they’ll almost always be happy to tell you how to apply (after bitching about how much their job truly sucks, of course).

For example, my last employer – the Superior Court of New Jersey – was always looking for interns. If anyone ever asked me how to apply, not only could I get them the information, I could direct them to the appropriate person to schmooze. And, if I really liked them, I could get that person basically salivating for the intern’s resume by talking them up like no one’s business.

3. Ace the Interview: Know What They Need

Most career advisors and bloggers, from “What Color is Your Parachute” to “Red Lemon Club” will tell you that a business isn’t interested in what you’ve done or where you’ve been as much as they’re interested in what you can offer them and how you can help their business. Once you’ve used either steps one or two to get your foot in the door, Foursquare makes answering that question at your informal meeting, phone interview, or face-to-face interview easy.

What’s on the To-Do list?
This seems so obvious, but you wouldn’t believe how many people miss out on this key step in general when interviewing. They’ll research the company, get specs on what the company did last year, what the company’s history is, but they’ll have no vision, no idea what the company needs or where it wants to go. Foursquare serves that up to you in a crowd-sourced business document called the To-Do list.

Austensibly for the purpose of giving other people an idea of why they should visit a particular place (and, as you may have guessed, what to do there) the To-Do list can also give you a great idea of how you can help the company by getting insider information.

For example, if you go to the Foursquare page for Elie Tahari’s boutique in SoHo, you’ll see that people checked in for the “Love, Loss, and What I Wore” cast party last month. (I know, I was one of them!) Leverage that in the interview or in your initial inquiry if you want to work there. Talk up a way that fashion intersects with the arts, talk about the book or the play, or talk about how you hosted a great event and have been your friends’ event planner for ages! Sure, it might seem strange to interview for a major fashion designer by talking about event planning, but you’ve now shown that you know something about his interests and his business that most other candidates probably didn’t!

4. Speck Work: Solve Problems They Don’t Know They Have

The To-Do list feature also gives you another great advantage over other interviewees and job seekers: it tells you where problems are that the company may not even realize existed!

During #140 Conference in New York City, there was a Foursquare swarm (when more than 50 Foursquare users check into a venue at one time) at a little night spot called LQ. The next day, there were a few comments on Twitter about the spotty service in the club, but the one that summed it up perfectly was right on the top of the To-Do list on Foursquare: “T-Mobile and AT&T largely don’t appear to work here, plan accordingly.”

What you and they may not know is that LQ offers free Wi-Fi to patrons; sadly that Wi-Fi doesn’t work down on the dance floor: great if you agree with Lady Gaga’s take on clubbing & cell phones in “Telephone,” but not so great for the internet addicted. You bring them a solution: boost their Wi-Fi and use your marketing skills to market them as a media-savvy club that’s right next to the Roger Smith Hotel, which also bills itself as a social media-friendly.

Of course, not all places listed on Foursquare are leveraging that to their advantage; some don’t even know what Foursquare is or how to use it, and that’s where you come in. One of the gems of a tiny, one-stoplight town in New Jersey that I frequent is a coffee shop called The Great Lodge. The problem with The Great Lodge (in addition to closing at 6pm) is that they have no media presence. Sure, they have a page on Foursquare, but it’s user created, and the user that first set it up made the map totally inaccurate and added nothing other than the name to the page.

This is where a foot in the door comes in handy. With a small business like this, the owners (and sometimes their family members) run the till; if you’re the mayor (or you know the mayor) you already know them and have probably gained their trust. Tell them you can double their clientele within a month as their social media adviser. In fact, I’d go so far as to offer to give my services for free for that first month, on the condition that if they’re satisfied with my work, they’ll hire me on after that to continue. Then, take over their page. Put up specials, tag them, get them categorized, fix their location on the map!

The Future of Foursquare and Businesses

Foursquare is gaining traction over similar services like Twitter location or Gowalla, and Facebook and Google have both been slow to the game. As such, it has a distinct advantage over the competition, and with more than a million members and counting – increasing users by 15,000 per day – it is quite possible that soon others are going to see this service as more than “virtual stalking “ or “an electronic punch card”.

In the future it’s possible that candidates may well be screened for having visited the business before they’re even hired! WSJ used 4sq to tweet about a bomb threat in NYC recently, breaking the news to its 4sq fans! Imagine if companies began using 4sq to also break business announcements – like employment vacancies – to people in the vicinity. Live near The New York Times or happen to wander by? It’s possible, in the future, you could find a “Drop off a Resume Today!” notice there, for anyone who happens to be hanging out near by!

In the meantime, it’s best to learn the ins and outs of the service now, utilizing the service as an early adopter so that when others are ready to make the leap, you’ll have the experience and the ability to say “I used Foursquare to get a job!” and look impressive.

About Elizabeth Williams

Elizabeth Williams is the founder and owner of Girl + Camera LLC.  Elizabeth has been a portrait photographer since 1999, and started independent photography in 2009.  Besides her photography, Elizabeth is an avid blogger and a “social media cool hunter.”  Elizabeth can be found online at melizabethwilliams.com or on Twitter at twitter.com/girlpluscamera.