Tweet Your Way to a New Job

By: Abby Gutowski

The United States unemployment rate was pushed to a 26-year high of 9.5% this June. With 9.5% of the U.S. population out of work, job seekers are turning to less traditional forms of job searching to find hot leads. The good news? Due to budget cuts, potential employers are using non-traditional avenues, like Twitter, to find employers as well. With plenty of job-seeking buzz flying around the Internet, these days a simple “tweet” could be your ticket to pull ahead of the competition. Especially for intern and entry-level job seekers, the greatest value Twitter has to offer in your job search is networking far beyond what you could typically do in person.
Getting Started is easy. If you don’t already have one, start by opening an “employer friendly” Twitter profile. In the “settings” section of your account, showcase your experiences in a short job pitch bio and enter your LinkedIn or VisualCV link in the Web site section so potential employers can easily review your experiences. Developing your personal brand is an important component to your credibility on Twitter.
Build Your Network by following businesses you’re interested in, your local chamber of commerce, influential contacts in your industry, and recruitment twitter profiles such as: @BigShoesNetwork @microjobs @CareerHelper @indeed @jobshouts @simplyhired @CAREERALISM @thejobsguy @HeatherHuhman
There are also intern recruitment profiles: @thinkintern @InternAlert@FindInternships
In addition, use services like the Twitter Yellow Pages to search by keyword for friends in your industry or geographic location.
Start tweeting about your industry news and where your job search is taking you. The more you tweet about what you know and where you’d like to be, you’ll generate followers that are interested in what you have to say or are willing to help you in your search. The key to building a following is to remain interesting to your current followers so they “retweet” your messages and more people discover you.
Follow hashtags about job searches. Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to tweets. Many people use hashtags to discuss a topic they’d like others to search and respond to. Job seekers can follow the hashtag #TweetMyJobs by searching the hashtag at search.twitter.com. Here you’ll see a stream of open positions from people who have tagged the tweet as a job. View and apply to the jobs you’re interested in and begin following new recruitment profiles. Other hashtags to follow are #jobs, #job and #career.
Abby Gutowski is the public relations manager at Weidert Group, Inc., a Northeast Wisconsin based marketing strategy and communications firm. Her career focus includes PR and social media planning and execution, but she is also an advocate for student and entry-level PR career development. Abby currently manages the intern program at Weidert Group, Inc., presents career development sessions to UW-system student groups, and will be a panelist on Comereccommended.com’s discussion “Interns & Entry-Level Employees: How to Recruit & Retain Them…For Less” on July 22.