Job Searching via Twitter
Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 7:20pm Thursday 19 March 2009
Job searching has evolved from newspapers to job boards, and now evolving from job boards into social networking sites including Twitter. Job seekers can use this medium thanks to new content aggregation sites such as TwitterJobSearch, HashJobs and various other sites.
When users post a tweet, they can add a hash tag with more information. These hash tags can be used by the Twitter Search to search for content. Hash tags relating to jobs include: #job, #jobpost, #naj (need A Job?), #haj (have A Job?), #employment, #recruiting, #hiring, #rtjob, #career, #staffing
Below is a list of some recruiters, job boards, and job content aggregators who are on twitter. You can follow me at @thomasshaw
Why Candidates should use Twitter
- Twitter doesn’t have to be very time-consuming, but if it’s going to be part of your job search strategy, make a point to keep up with it by sending out something useful every day.
- Read what other people write and respond. Join conversations and start your own.
- Don’t be afraid to send a message directly to a professional in your field. Simply address your tweet to their Twitter name, and they should receive it.
- Use the direct message feature if you have a private or personal note. Remember that the recipient may respond publicly, though.
- Feel free to tweet that you are looking for an opportunity.
- It can give you immediate access to other professionals in your field. When you follow industry leaders, you’ll know who spends time with them, what conferences they attend, what they’re reading and what is on their minds. This is great information to leverage for your search.
- You will increase your exposure and credibility as well as personal and professional relationships when you connect to others in your industry.
- It offers you a venue to demonstrate your expertise and share information in quick, pithy bursts of wisdom. This is perfect if you don’t have the time or energy to create a blog.
Tips
- Brand yourself professionally. Choose a professional Twitter handle using your name or some combination of your name and profession that sounds good and is easy to remember.
- Take time to create a professional profile that will attract your target market. If you don’t have a website, link to your LinkedIn profile.
- Before you follow anyone, start posting some tweets. This will help you establish your presence and help you get used to "twittering"
- Continue to build your network by using Twitter Search and Twitter’s Find People tool. Manually review profiles and use Twubble to help you find new people to follow. Use directories such as Twellow and TwitDir. Grow your network slowly - you don’t want to follow 1000 people and have only 30 following you. That makes you look spammy, not professional.
- Remember the phrase "give and you shall recieve"? Think about what you can do for others. Don’t blatantly self-promote. Instead, help promote others. “Retweet” (pass along information someone else shared, giving them credit) - you will earn followers and friends this way. Those who know (and like) you will become part of your network and will be willing to help you.
Because each post can only contain 140 characters, shorthand is used lots when tweeting
- RT = Retweet, followed by @ then the person you’re retweeting’s username e.g. RT @thomasshaw indicates you are retweeting one of my posts
- OH – Overheard
- DM - Direct Message
- @ - Send/Reply to e.g. @thomasshaw - sends a message to me on the public timeline
- BTW - By The Way
- JV - Joint Venture
- IRL - In Real Life
- LOL - Laugh out Loud, or Lots of Laughter depending on who you ask!
- FTF - Face to Face
- IMHO - In My Honest Opinion
- abt - about
Frequently Used Phrases
- The Twitterverse, or the Twitosphere - the community of Twitter users
- Tweeter, or Twitterer - a Twitter user
- Tweeple - Twitter Users
- Tweet - a post on Twitter. Tweets - the updates you, and everyone else, post
- Followers - people who have chosen to receive updates for a particular Twitterer
- Twitterati - the members of the Twitter A-list that everyone wants to follow.
- Twitterstream - the public, or friend, timeline - the posts on Twitter are chronologically listed
- Mistweet - an accidentally posted tweet - may have errors or be incomplete ie a mistake
- Retweet - the action of reposting another user’s post, crediting them for it
- Retweeter, or Retweetist - someone who retweets
- Twisticuffs - the posts when 2 or more twitterers have a disagreement
- Twetiquette (or Twitetiquette) - the right way to behave on Twitter
