Unemployed Help now has a Twitter account. No, it’s not because I want to keep track of people’s mundane daily activities. Twitter is all the buzz right now in the social media job search circles. In that buzz I keep hearing that Twitter can help people find jobs. I think you should be a bit skeptical concerning the social media job search hype but in this economy it’s worth a try.
The social media job search might just be the key to a successful job search. Just the sheer volume of information available on social media networks is amazing. It looks like Twitter has graduated from a way to super obsess over the celebrity of the week to actually being helpful.
Can You Find a Job With Twitter?
It’s been a little over a week since the Unemployed Help Twitter account has been up. This is what we have so far. @unemployees is now following over 100 career professionals. These people are professional resume writers, career coaches, job interview specialists to human resource managers and recruiters.
Everyday I get access to a flood of information from top job search and career professionals. Probably too much. Amazingly there is a lot of useful information being tweeted that could help job seekers. I initially expected Twitter to be filled with a bunch of people tweeting random useless information to the world.
What I found is the opposite. There is actually too much useful information. The best way to manage the information overload is to create lists by topic. I decide to separate the information into lists for Human Resource/Recruiters, Resume Writers, Job Interview experts, etc. If you create good topic lists and don’t go overboard like I did by following over 100 people in week you will be fine.
Social Media Job Search Tips – Twitter
- Don’t follow too many people too soon. It’s easy to suffer from information overload. Follow 10-20 people to start off. That should give you great access to the trends in your field.
- Use lists! Lists are a great way to breakdown the massive amounts of information on Twitter into more manageable bite sized portions. Following lists are also a good way to follow more people on a specific topic without having to receive every tweet from every person on the list.
- Don’t spend more than 30 minutes on Twitter! Social media sites are popular and addictive. It’s easy and tempting to spend all day clicking on tweets. After about half an hour the likelihood of you actually acting on any of the information decreases dramatically. All of the information in the world won’t do a bit of good if you don’t put it to use.
- Cut the fluff. Don’t waste time clicking links from people tweeting useless information. If you don’t find someone’s tweets useful or interesting stop following them.
- Remember your career network. Send out links to any interesting or helpful information to your career network. It helps you become a resource in the minds of your peers. People like resources. They hate leeches.
So to answer the question: Yes you can find a job using Twitter. You just have to laser focus your attention on what help you really need. Not getting callbacks for interviews? Focus on your resume. Can’t close the deal after an interview? You need to focus on selling your skills as the solution to the employers problems. Whatever your problem is Twitter has tons of professionals waiting to help you solve them. Click here to get started with my lists of Twitter professionals.
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