Twitter: The Job Seeker’s New Resource

On average, searching for a job takes 211 days. This is a long time for 9.2% of America’s population to remain without a source of income. The multitudes of jobseekers are utilizing every resource to be hired as soon as possible. Twitter has proven to be an effect way to communicate with employers in the midst of the social networking revolution.

In business, who you know can be more important that what you know when seeking a job. Twitter facilitates the formation of these vital new contacts. Other benefits of Twitter include:

• Discovering job opportunities
• Attracting people with similar interests
• Researching employers
• Expanding your network
• Branding yourself
• Increasing your visibility
• Linking into an industry

Professional “tweeters” must use the site carefully in order to boost their image rather than destroy it. The following chart contains tips on how to use Twitter in this way:

Track progress regularly	Keep up with your account. Employers will use interest if it they don’t hear from you for two-weeks.
Understand your limits	Maintain a professional post format. Do not use the same Twitter profile to communicate with friends and companies.
Be selective about who you follow	Following too many people will overwhelm you with information. Only follow people who post valuable and informative tweets that are relative to your interests.
Establish your credibility early on	Create an online profile and post your resume. Post a link to this profile on Twitter so that your followers can check it out.
Be consistent with your updates	Post consistently so that the people who follow you maintain interest in your profile, without feeling as if they know too much about your life. Find a balance between both extremes.
Communicate with key employers	Reply to their posts or re-tweet them. Twitter will notify them of your activity and the likelihood that they will look at your profile will greatly increase.
Build your Twitter relationships into email relationships	Once you make the initial contact with an employer, it is good to build that relationship. If they are hiring, they will most likely contact you via email in order to get to know you better.

Create a Twitter profile to become more informed, better connected, and end your job hunt today!

Sources:

http://www.jasonhparker.com/Consulting/Recent_Graduate_Blog/Entries/2010/5/17_Using_Twitter_as_a_Job_Search_Tool_(Yes%2C_it_can_and_does_work!).html

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/worklife/05/17/cb.twitter.to.find.job/?hpt=Mid

http://www.davinciinstitute.com/speakers/davincideb-deb-frey-mayor-of-the-vault/six-steps-to-finding-jobs-using-twitter/

http://under30ceo.com/social-media-series-twitter-for-business/