Home « Online Job Search Guide « Social Media and Job Search « Twitter for Job Search
Twitter: The Newest Job Board?
Is Twitter a fantastic social media tool? Yes! Is Twitter a job board? Yes! The lines between the traditional job boards like Monster and Dice and social media sites like Twitter are now becoming blurred.
Employers, recruiters and hiring managers are now actively posting jobs via 140 character tweets. Some post directly to Twitter, while others use services like TweetMYJOBS or TweetAJob to manage their listings. There are thousands of jobs posted every day, internationally, and that number is growing.
As a job seeker, reviewing and responding to postings on Twitter can give you a competitive advantage.
- You may find jobs that are posted exclusively to Twitter.
- You may find jobs that are posted on Twitter first, before other locations on the web.
- If you are looking for a job in marketing or IT, applying for a job through Twitter demonstrates that you are up to date on current technology and marketing tools.
Here is a step-by-step guide on how to find job postings using Twitter.
Keywords and Hashtags
Before you search for jobs on Twitter you will need to consider two things, keywords and hashtags.
Your keywords are the words that best tie to your job search goals such as the job title, the location and the company name. These are the same keywords that you use on traditional job boards to get to your desired listings.
Hashtags, which are words beginning with the # sign, are tags that you will need to help index and sort the tweets that are coded as job postings. The hashtags to use on Twitter for job postings are #job or #jobs. By adding a hashtag, you will help to exclude tweets that have your keywords, but aren’t job postings.
Finding Jobs on Twitter
To search for jobs on Twitter, you can use the Twitter Basic Search (right hand navigation on your Twitter home page), Twitter advanced search via www.search.twitter.com or the Twitter Job Search application via www.twitjobsearch.com.
Simply enter your keywords and hashtags in the search box provided, then hit enter. Any tweets matching your search string will display in the results. Here is an example of what a job tweet often looks like, “VP Marketing, Boston, Charlesbank Co., http://smallurl #jobs”.
To refine your search results, use some of the advanced search capabilities, which allow you to exclude keywords, search by date, by language and by specific Twitter users.
Turn Job Search Results into an RSS Feed
Have you gotten on the RSS Feed bandwagon yet? RSS Feeds convert online content into an automatic stream of information that gets delivered to a “reader” on your computer or mobile device. A “reader” is simply a website page that aggregates all of the feeds you have signed up for in one place, which saves you time and helps you organize information.
To use RSS feeds with Twitter job postings, hone your Twitter job search query until you get the most relevant results, then look for the orange RSS symbol to sign up for the feed. Whenever new postings are listed that meet your query, they will get added to the Reader view.
This can be especially helpful if you are searching under several different job titles, for example; Sales Manager, Sales Director and Sales VP. You can create three feeds that all point to the same, single reader. How convenient!
If you are new to RSS Feeds, learn more at http://www.google.com/reader.
Follow and List Individual Twitter Users
As you search for job listings on Twitter, you may notice that the most relevant job postings come from just a few Twitter accounts. Instead of signing up for an RSS feed of keyword search results, you can follow the relevant Twitter users, add the Twitter users to a Twitter List (perhaps named “Job Search”) or sign up for an RSS feed for that specific Twitter user.
The service TweetMYJOBS also advertises that job seekers can choose from 6,300 vertical Twitter job Channels, then be sent new Twitter listings via text message or Twitter Direct Message.
Job-Hunt has several useful lists of Twitter accounts that can help you. Pick individuals out of the list to follow one-by-one or follow the entire list. Looking at Job-Hunt's list of employers recruiting directly through Twitter, you might be interested in just following the specific employers who interest you, or monitoring all of the employers.
Bottom Line
Reviewing Twitter job postings is one more free tool that you can add to your job search tool box. There are jobs posted for every location, industry and profession. And, you can have jobs automatically delivered to your desktop via an RSS reader or to your Twitter account by following or listing target Twitter users.
So, try a search today! You have nothing to lose, only job search momentum to gain.
© Copyright Marci Reynolds, 2010. All rights reserved. Used With Permission
Marci Reynolds is the CEO of J2B Marketing, a “Job Seeker 2 Business”™ Internet Marketing & Online Copywriting Services Firm based in Boston, MA. From LinkedIn profile makeovers to launching Twitter strategies, J2B helps job seekers harness the latest internet and marketing communication tools available. See Marci's Job Search TweetSheet, a free one-page guide to using Twitter for job hunting and her ebook, How To Use Twitter for Job Search, available at TwitterJobSearcheBook.com. Marci Reynolds was previously VP, North America Sales Operations at Monster.com. Learn more at www.j2bmarketing.com, on Twitter @j2bmarketing.