Make Me Your CEO

One of the things that has really helped the revitalization of my job search has been the incorporation of Twitter (@Ken_Conant).  To my surprise there are a lot of companies on Twitter looking for employees, and people willing to help others find their perfect job!  Even more exciting is the fact that there are already many examples of people leveraging Twitter to market their services and landing excellent jobs!

One such person who reached out to me is Jamie Varon (@jamievaron), the girl behind the internet sensation TwitterShouldHireMe.com.  Some of the inspiration for my own website was derived from what I saw happening with her campaign, thank you again Jamie.  If you missed it, Jamie blogged and tweeted her way to a meeting with Twitter to discuss possible employment opportunities.  Unfortunately, they were looking for someone with more experience.  Not all was lost, through her hard work, Jamie grabbed the attention of many people who wanted to help and eventually the attention of a company called techVenture.  She is now working at techVenture as a Community Manager and seems very excited about the job.

(@jamievaron also blogs at Shatterboxx and intersected)

Getting Started With Your Campaign

One of the first things that you will find is that the 140 characters that Twitter allows for each tweet is not a lot to work with.  A website or blog to host your résumé and information about you will really help to overcome this challenge.  Jamie and I both host our own websites with unique domain names, but simpler solutions could serve the same purpose.  Sites like Wordpress.com and Blogger.com are free and easy for anyone to use, there are also many other free hosting services that will do the job.

What Should You Tweet?

The first thing that I started doing was tweeting whenever I was going to spend some time searching for work.  I started out with messages that were too simple and not well thought out.  “I’m looking for work now” doesn’t give anyone information to find you by.  I stepped it up by adding a link to my résumé, but still this tells very little about what I am looking for.  The key was to add descriptions about what type of work I am looking for.

Use Strong Key Words

My tweets about looking for work really started to get noticed when I specified what type of jobs I would be applying for.  The phrase “Job Search” is a really great start, many job agents are scouring Twitter for this phrase.  Then use the type of job you are looking for, things like “web development”, “nursing”, “IT”, maybe “sales” or “marketing” will help potential employers find you.  My first tweet that really got noticed was the following:

Still there was room for improvement, but I had enough keywords and information for people on Twitter to fill in the blanks.  @rezlady retweeted the following improvements to all of her followers on Twitter:

The words that are preceded with # are search terms, they are specifically placed to help people locate interests on twitter.  Using the # in front of your keywords will help employers find your tweets.  They are also a great way for you to search for people who have jobs to offer.  Use # followed by your keyword in your search (no space) and Twitter will bring up every recent tweet labeled with the keyword.  Also if you are focused on a specific area or city include that as a search term, for example try searching for “#job #Boston” to find job listings in Boston.

What To Expect For Results

Using Twitter alone probably is not going to land you a job.  You are still going to need to apply to the position in a more traditional manner.  Soon after I sent the tweet looking for startup companies, people started sending me great sources listing jobs that I am really interested in.  People have also started sending me references to other companies that use twitter, and passed my tweets along to those companies.  This opens up a dialog that will help you stand out when you send a traditional cover letter and résumé.  For a look at a best case scenario scroll down to the second half of the press page at TwitterShouldHireMe.com.

You Don’t Have Many Followers?

Certainly having just over 400 followers has helped my cause.  Don’t fret you can still get noticed and develop a following even if you are starting from scratch.  Start using Twitter on a regular basis, and tweet about things that interest you.  Slowly people will start responding when you mention interests that you share.  Go ahead and follow them even if you don’t know them in the real world.  The most important part of Twitter is to interact with people, remember this is a community.  The more you interact, the more followers and influence you will gain.

Let’s Help Each Other

If you are also looking for work send @Ken_Conant [me] your résumé tweet and I would be more than happy to retweet it to all of my followers.  Make sure to use @Ken_Conant within the tweet so I don’t miss it.  Also feel free to leave a comment here with your Twitter name even if you are not looking for work.

If you found this helpful or just want to help me find a job please use the Share This link below to help get the word out about the website, thanks!

Tags: Job Search, twitter

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 4:22 am and is filed under Job Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.