It’s become the de facto means for people to tell each other what they’re having for lunch, or which movie they’re about to see. Not just that – it’s become a hotbed of activity for business and commercial purposes, favored by Internet Marketers, Bloggers and product developers to spread the word about their vittles.
A growing use of Twitter is in the domain of job hunting. The capacity for building relationships using Twitter is phenomenal, and this is why your job search can take a new angle.
The essence of Twitter is the establishing of followership – long term, inobtrusive relationships. These relationships are based on relevance, i.e. people follow each other because they’re saying something interesting, and it’s this basis of relatedness which builds trust and authority.
And guess what – if you’re looking for work in a specific industry, niche, or role, then it’s likely you will have tweeted about that subject in the past.
So what better than to leverage your followership to seek job opportunities?
If you’re looking for work, then why not tweet the fact?
Tweet what projects you’ve worked on, or what you’d like to work on. Tweet about the challenges you’ve faced and overcome in your work. Tweet about your aspirations. As long as it is relevant, people will listen. And maybe, respond.
This isn’t a deterministic strategy – there is no guarantee that this will land the dream job. But it is low cost and low effort. Having said that, just because it is low effort, it doesn’t mean you can be lazy. This strategy requires you to be selective about what you tweet. If you’re building up the interest and intrigue in a number of prospective recruiting managers (you’ll know this if they reply or retweet your own tweets) then you could destroy your progress by a careless tweet about what you got up to last night (and who with).
Of course, this only works if you have followers! How do you encourage followers?
There is an etiquette of a sorts (is that twitiquette?) where following is reciprocated (but not always). The most effective way of building your followeship is (you guessed it) to follow others. But only follow tweeters relevant to your interests and industry. It’s no good following a turnip grower if you’re looking for a job in fine art. Follow people, and they will probably follow you.
Just a point on the twitiquette – be aware of what rocks and what sucks on Twitter. You’ll be an outcast if you get it wrong.
So Twitter has great potential in searching the hidden job market ! Here’s a great article on the essentials of Twitter:
I’ll finish by including another link to the CIO.COM website which gives you more advice on using Twitter in your job search:
http://www.cio.com/article/482324/Twitter_Tips_How_to_Use_Twitter_to_Job_Hunt
