Is Twitter the answer for your job search?
Twitter is one of the most remarkable tools to emerge on the social networking scene in the past couple of years. When it launched, many people scoffed at a service based on the premise of asking people, “What are you doing?” at any given moment of the day, and having them answer in a 140-character burst.
Do we really want to know that our friends, let alone total strangers, are “going to the dentist” or “hitting Starbucks” or — one of my personal favorite tweets — “staring at people through the prongs of a fork and pretending they’re in jail”?
The truth is, there’s some appeal to that kind of idle chatter — but such tweets aren’t the reason Twitter has become such a phenomenon. One of the biggest reasons for Twitter’s success is its many applications for business — including the job search.
As Miriam Salpeter describes the phenomenon:
Statistics show that job search networking is much more effective when you make “loose” connections - touching base with people beyond your immediate circle whose networks and contacts are much different from your own. With over 3 million users, Twitter offers an unparalleled opportunity to create an extended network.
Guess what? Miriam wrote that in November and since then Twitter has already grown to 6 million users. Now that’s a networking opportunity — if you know how to use it.
Here are some tips on –
1. Getting started on Twitter.
2. Building your Twitter network with hiring managers and other folks who can help you.
3. Creating a Twitter elevator pitch for your job search.
All of these tips are designed to help you use Twitter for networking. As we’ve said often on this blog, consistent and enthusiastic networking is the biggest key to a successful job search, which is why we advocate spending more time networking (online and in person) and less time poring over the hundreds of thousands of job listings on Monster, CareerBuilder, TheLadders, et al.
That’s why we created a service — RiseSmart Job Concierge — to conduct your online job search for you. RiseSmart’s staff — yes, real people — search nearly a million jobs across the Web on your behalf, then hand-pick the ones that match your specific criteria. That’s what makes our service special.
It’s also what makes RiseSmart’s service a perfect companion to Twitter. Building a network on Twitter — while certainly worthwhile — can also be very time-consuming. But if you can cut out the time you currently spend on Monster and let RiseSmart handle that part of your search for you, that gives you the time you need to squeeze the most value out of Twitter, as well as other networking tools.
(Now, I should add that in addition to facilitating networking, Twitter is also beginning to inspire new job boards, too. And isn’t that just what you needed — another job board to search?)
It amazes me how quickly Twitter has become a “go to” social network for job seekers. With movements (such as @jobangels - whose purpose is to connect job seekers with networking contacts and opportunities), actual job postings and chances to make those all important “loose” connections, people are finding jobs using Twitter, but more importantly, they are growing their networks.
Since a large percentage of jobs are found via networking, in my opinion, the opportunity to grow that “loose” network is still what makes Twitter worthwhile.