Jeremy Johnson has a new guest blog post this week on the importance of using Twitter as part of your job search.
Jeremy is a recruiter in Kansas City for EHD Technologies, a recruiting, staffing and managed services company serving the IT, Engineering and Automotive industries.
You can also follow him on Twitter at jsquaredkc
Job Hunting with Twitter
With over 50% of talent seekers now using Twitter to help find candidates and fill their job openings, if you’re not using Twitter in your own job search, you’re falling behind the curve. And, if you haven’t gotten on Twitter yet because you think it’s only good for tweeting what you had for breakfast or following how much Amanda Bynes loves plastic surgery, guess again. This is a powerful social medium that can give you more options, more information, and more opportunities for your job search. If you haven’t started yet, here are a few basics to get you going:
Learn Twitter basics – If you’re a Twitter newbie, the first thing to do is get the lay of the land. Learn the basics. Know that a Tweet is your 140-character-or-less message that you type and send. Know what a retweet is. Understand hashtags (words with ‘#’ at the front, such as #followfriday) and what they’re used for. The website Mashable actually has a decent online Twitter user guide at http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/. It’s a good place to start. You can also use Twitter’s own help section at https://support.twitter.com/articles/215585#.
Gear your Twitter page for your job search –
1) Start by being professional. Remember that we’re talking about a first impression with a potential employer. It starts with a respectable looking picture of you. It doesn’t have to be a formal head shot, but it should but it should look respectable and it should be of you (no cartoons or pictures of other things). This same rules applies across other social media, too –people are more likely to show interest in your profile if there’s a picture of you. But make sure it’s a good one!
2) While you have 140 characters to use in a Tweet, you have 160 characters to use in your personal bio to tell people about yourself. If you’re using Twitter as a job-hunting tool, you should be intentional with this. This isn’t like LinkedIn, where you have a ton of space to tell your story. For your Twitter bio, with so little space, focus on listing your job title and where you live – the main things hiring managers will search on to find you. For example, my bio says some personal things about me, but it also includes that I’m an IT Recruiter living in KC. You can also include a link here an online resume, using resources like VisualCV (www.visualcv.com).
3) Since you’re limited with what you can write about yourself in your bio, you can creatively use a custom background that has key information you want your audience to know about you. This will take work, but if you want more than just a 160-character bio, this is a way to do it. I recommend looking at Kim Garst’s Twitter page (@kimgarst). She’s a social media dynamo. Unless you have some serious graphic design skills, you may not be able to pull off what she has on her page, but at least you’ll get a good idea what I’m talking about.
Learn how to search through Twitter – Twitter has its own search function that’s pretty basic but you can find things based on keyword or hashtag. It’s a good place to start, though. You can also use it to search for tweets that may be referencing potential jobs. Searching from the ‘Connect’ page on your Twitter account will help you find people. Searching from the ‘Discover’ page will help you find specific topics or areas of interest. You can also try Twitter’s advanced search at https://twitter.com/search-advanced. You can also search with Twitter-related apps like Twellow (www.twellow.com). I’ve heard Twellow described as a Yellow Pages for Twitter. It’s a directory of public Twitter accounts separated into hundreds of categories that you can browse and search – and there are a lot of people here to find.
Find your target audience and connect with them – The first thing you have to know here is who does it make sense to connect with on Twitter? What’s your goal? Who are you trying to interact with? What are you trying to learn? Most likely it will be two main groups – people who can offer you a job and people who are in your industry already doing what you want to do. One of the biggest advantages of Twitter is its openness. It allows the possibility of connecting with people you wouldn’t otherwise have access to. Reach out to people directly. Respond to their posts. Create conversations. Twitter isn’t a medium meant for one-way communication. It’s designed for dialogue, so start thinking about it in that way, rather than just for posts you can send, hoping the right people will see it. This is one of the problems I’ve had. In thinking about how to build the audience I want, I’ve focused on trying to provide information that I think would attract those types of people. But, I haven’t gone out and tried to actively created conversations with those same people. I haven’t searched for them , and I haven’t engaged. That’s one thing I’m working to correct. Another way to connect with others on Twitter is to share their content; promote others before you promote yourself. This is the sort of goodwill that will make other people more likely to engage with you. And if this is a target company, hiring manager or recruiter, consistently taking part in their conversations will better keep you on their radar if the right job comes up.
Understand how companies are hiring using Twitter – Recruiters, like myself, are most likely to use Twitter for posting jobs, sourcing candidates and trying to find additional information on candidates we’ve already found somewhere else. For example, we will come across your resume, then look for you on social media. Because Twitter doesn’t allow for in-depth bios or personal descriptions, to really learn more about you, we’re going to be interested in what you post – what type of content you’re putting out there. It’s not only any potential industry content or expertise you’re sharing that’s of interest, it’s also your personality. Twitter isn’t a medium for stuffed shirts. It’s meant to be more informal, so we expect to see more of your true personality come out on Twitter, which helps us evaluate what type of fit you may be for a company.
Corporate recruiters or corporate HR personnel will usually have a presence on Twitter that’s separate from their company’s normal Twitter account and that’s geared towards their jobs. Find these people, follow them and engage with them. If there’s a particular company you’re interested in, particularly if it’s a larger one, you can probably keep a strong tab on their job opportunities through Twitter. Also, one of the reasons companies use Twitter for hiring is to build their brand in the eyes of potential talent. The takeaway for an active job seeker? They’re looking to engage in dialogue with candidates and build relationships. Since the hiring process is a two-way street, it makes sense for companies to use this medium to lure talent their way. Companies are also using third-party sites to get their job postings onto Twitter. TweetMyJobs (www.tweetmyjobs.com) is the largest Twitter job board and can send job recommendations directly to your Twitter account through alerts or relevant job channels. It also allows you to distribute your resume quickly and easily online. TwitJobSearch (www.twitjobsearch.com) is another Twitter job search engine that lets you search for jobs or browse by category.
Just start doing it – If Twitter scares you or you don’t understand the lingo, that’s okay. Just dive in and start using it. You don’t have to be an expert, but you do have to be consistent. Build the habit of using Twitter consistently and just keep building your understanding of it as you go. I am by far not a guru with Twitter, and I need to carve out more time myself for putting it to good use. But, I’m picking up more the more I use it and the more I read about how to use it effectively.