Tweeting Your Way to a Job
18. Mar, 2009 
0 Comments
Unless you’ve been living under a rock somewhere you’ve probably heard about the phenomenal growth of Twitter’s social network. Twitter.com has been in the news because of its use during trials and congressional sessions, as well as for stories about people who use twitter to get instant information or who need help due to unexpected circumstances.
Twitter is also turning into a hot spot for finding a job.
Twitter operates like a community instant messaging system. You can send 140-character messages (tweets) to anyone on your friend list. You can also ask those people to retweet your tweet to their friends, substantially expanding the reach of your message. This is a powerful way to reach the people you need to communicate with, including hiring managers.
Twitter is one of the most powerful networking tools available to job seekers. Here are some tips to make the most of it.
- Include your job pitch in your Twitter bio
- Use a professional-looking picture of yourself as your avatar
- Include the link to your online resume in your bio. Use ResumeBear.com or VisualCV.com to create a nicely formatted web page resume, or put your resume on a free blog at Blogger.com
- Tweet about your skills and your job search, and establish yourself as an expert in your field. Don’t exaggerate or misrepresent yourself, but do put the best spin on your achievements and capabilities.
- Seek out Twitter friends who are in your field or in related fields, cultivating a network of people in your industry.
- The secret to developing a helpful and supportive community is to respond to the tweets of your friends. Retweet information that you find interesting or useful, answer requests for information and strike up personal conversations wherever you can.
- Keep your tweets professional. Remember, anything you tweet can be found by a hiring manager, so present a professional image at all times.
The beauty of Twitter is that while you’re looking for and befriending people who may be able to help you, others may be looking for you. Recruiters and hiring managers troll Twitter for potential candidates, so put yourself in front of them. Before befriending a recruiter, check their bio, visit their website and make sure they friend people back. You’re looking for recruiters with a track record who are involved with your industry and who you can strike up conversations with.
Locate recruiters and jobs using the Twitter search function:
http://search.twitter.com can be an extremely powerful tool.
Enter search terms like ‘jobs’, ‘job recruiter’, the name of companies you’re interested in and terms relating to your field.
Another way to locate job postings on Twitter is using TweetMyJobs.com. Create an account and subscribe to channels that fit your field. You can specify which cities you’re interested in and can be notified when a job is posted that fits your requirements. You can also review jobs posted through TweetMyJobs at:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=tweetmyjobs
You’ll find a list of recruiters and Twitter accounts dedicated to displaying job postings at Mashable’s Twitter Jobs section:
http://mashable.com/2009/03/13/twitter-jobs/
Discover Twitter users in your field and in your community, as well as companies and recruiters using Twitter, at Twellow.com, TwitterTroll.com and JustTweetIt.com.
TwitterLocal.net lets you follow tweets from others in whatever geographical location you specify.
TweetDeck.com is a very useful tool that allows you to organize the people you follow by whatever criteria makes sense to you – by location, by field, by company, etc.
TweetBeep.com allows you to keep track of tweets related to your specified keywords on Twitter.
A Twitter Success Story
A gentleman who recently lost his job tweeted about it to his Twitter network. Within 24 hours he had a solid job offer. If you don’t already have a strong network of job-related friends on Twitter, now is the time to get started!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=c54023d0-ce93-4e9f-9c65-457b6ea57b7f "Tweeting Your Way to a Job")
Thanks for sharing these strategies for job seekers. I work in recruitment marketing and I am always looking for new ways to reach job seekers. I have found that twitter works great for my clients because it is a fantastic way to reach passive job seekers as well as those looking for new careers.
I am currently working with an innovative healthcare company who is hiring career minded individuals for opportunities in Texas and Virginia. I will be posting these positions on Twitter. @stewartb2b
This has some excellent information. I’ve been on Twitter for a few months, but didn’t really understand some of the different options like Tweetdeck, Tweetbeep, etc. Thanks so much for writing this!
This is pretty interesting. I have been on Twitter for a while now, and I never even thought of this use for it.
It is awesome that you can get a job within 24 hours with a social network program. Keep up the good work everyone. Very interesting.
That was a very interesting article. I’m just learning about all this social networking and this is a very innovative way of using it for job seeking.
i am a job seeker. thanks for this informative article. So far i have using twitter for just fun with my twitter friends. now only i know the power of this twitter tool. thanks for providing this information.
Very interesting article. I think that this is a very innovative way for job seeking. Thank you for the information you gave us through this article!