Twitter changes all the rules! It actually puts you in the driver’s seat which means now YOU can connect with others without actually knowing them at all! You just click the follow button and you get to see everything they write and you can reply to anything that interests you. It doesn’t matter whether they follow you back or not because you have accessed them in a way you previously couldn’t! Using keyword searches within Twitter, you can narrow the target industry to recruiters and hiring managers that serve that space making it easier to determine who to follow!
Tools are available to follow conversations that interest you on Twitter (search.twitter.com) and you can easily perform an advanced search (ex: RELIABILITY JOBS) as a keyword. You can even save several searches and continue to follow them if you want to stay up-to-date on the latest jobs posted to twitter.
Twitter is such a friendly tool that you could use it to tell people you need a job. Recently a notification through Twitter was sent from my alumni group about students looking for internship opportunities. Pretty cool considering I knew someone who needed one at the time! I was able to connect the two programs together and voila!
There is nothing more satisfying than helping people and genuinely, I believe others feel this way too -which is why this forum is great! With only 140 characters to state your interest for specific employment opportunities, provide your LinkedIn profile or another webhosted site where your resume resides, it is a way to quickly share without OVER sharing!
Remember: You can’t just sign up for Twitter and begin asking for a job with the expectation of connections magically providing you with details about jobs etc.
Go out of your way to provide relevant content on Twitter in the realm of your interests and expertise. If you are an out of work Engineer, tweet about the things that every engineer needs to know or resources you have found that really help other people. The same is true for any professional in their field.
Remember that your twitter account is part of your personal brand and your social footprint so you want to use good judgment when posting to Twitter. Keep it positive, helpful, stimulating and different! You are reinforcing what you want your audience and therefore your potential employer, to think about you! Use your Twitter profile bio, a mere 160 characters, to add interest and differentiate yourself from other job seekers.
Take time to learn more about the social etiquette of properly using Twitter because it only takes one great impression to land an interview and one unprofessional tweet to stall your job search.
In the end, it really comes down to how well you leverage Twitter – if you want to get something, you have to give something. Make it count!
What advice do you give others who want to use Twitter as a job search tool? Post your comments below.