Jobhop Jobhop's blog : How Can Twitter Help In The Job Search
What do you use Twitter for?
Perhaps you follow celebrities, chat with friends, or you use it to receive news before anyone else does.
How about using Twitter to help you get a job?
Twitter can be a valuable tool, listing jobs in real time, giving you a head start over your competition.
I’m assuming you have an account if you haven’t I would suggest you open one today REGISTER ON TWITTER
If you’re opening a Twitter account purely for your job hunt then have a Twitter handle that describes you & what you do..ie @MarketingMary @BankerBill @ITLisa @geeksue
Check your profile picture, does it look professional? If it isn’t then it needs to be and don’t think you can get away with an avatar, that’s a definite no no, it has to be of you. There’s nothing worse than trying to have a conversation with someone who’s profile picture is of an egg, would you feel comfortable talking to an employer who’s profile picture was an egg? It doesn’t really scream professional, read "Pimp up your profile" for tips on how to get the best from your profile.
There’s much more you can do now with Twitter backgrounds to really brand yourself. If you’re a dab hand at photo shop then design away. If not then if you go into settings > then into design and from there you can change your header and your background.
Make sure you have a good Bio with good keywords and include a link back to your professional online profile ( on Jobhop!) where an employer can find out more about you.
Start building a good network of people around you and let your Twitter friends know that you’re looking for a job, get them to look out for openings for you. Ask them to RT for you ( RT = retweet where someone will tweet your message for you ), remember it’s a conversation, be engaged, build relationships, do not spam. Find out who’s tweeting from the companies you’d like to work at, get connected, then when a vacancy arises they’ll think of you.
Make some Twitter “lists” ie people/companies you’d like to work for, Recruitment people, Headhunters, job tweeters and then start to follow some #tags (#tags are groupings on Twitter, they’re used to mark topics in a tweet)
The main #tags to look out for are #jobs #careers #jobsearch #recruiting
Recently #CV has become popular and now job seekers are using this tag to alert employers to their #CV a lot more
#CV is a tag that you would create in your Tweet , for example...
Project manager 8yrs for @MayGurney looking for a position in Construction http:// (link to your online profile ) #CV
Industry conference live streams have their own #tags & even if you’re not attending the conference you can still join in with the conversation and network as if you’re there, a great way to get some valuable contacts.
Check out @Tweetmyjobs @twitjobsearch and @Jobhop for regular job postings and if you’d like to work for Twitter find out what jobs they have at @jointheflock
Make sure you tweet about your expertise, include influential people in your tweets and tweet links to your blog posts where potential employers can find out more about your skills/knowledge/craft. Answer questions, doing this will help you become a position of authority, if you don’t know the answers then google them!
Remember to use a few tools to manage and measure like TweetDeck or Hootsuite and with these all on your phone you can constantly be kept up to date with any job opportunities that arise on Twitter.
Don’t get left behind, get tweeting, your next job could be just a tweet away
JOIN Jobhop and spread the word.
Julie Bishop Jobhop.co.uk
In:
- Social media