Find Jobs on Twitter
4 Ways To Use Twitter To Find A Job
1. Create a Twitter account that showcases your professional profile.
Finnigan recommends putting together your Twitter account as though it
were your online business card. I realize I’ve failed to do this myself.
When I created my account a couple of years ago, a friend helped me
compose this clever-sounding line: “Old media hand swimming with the new
tides.” But Dan points out that I would be better served by saying
something like, “Senior Editor at Forbes where I cover careers and
leadership.” I’ve also squandered the profile by including only
Forbes.com instead of the link to my personal contributor page.
If
you are not a journalist, but, say, an accountant, the same rules
apply. Make your account information as specific and professional as
possible, and on your profile, link to your own blog if you have one.
One of the reasons I have failed to do these things is my confusion
about whether I am using Twitter for personal or professional reasons.
What if I’m tweeting something about my teenager’s upcoming jazz combo
performance? That’s not information I want to send to my professional
network. Dan recommends an obvious trick that was lost on me: I can
create another account for my non-professional interests. If you have a
hobby, like raising English bulldogs or running triathlons, you can make
an account that is devoted to that purpose, and keep your professional
Twitter feed separate. Or simply maintain two accounts, one for personal
and one for professional use.
2. Start following people and institutions. Figure
out who the relevant people are in your field and become their follower.
I admit to doing a poor job of this as well. It would be wise of me to
pay attention to editors at the publications and websites where I might
want to work someday and to become their follower.
Once you have identified some key people, Twitter makes it easy for
you to find more people to follow. Click on the “who to follow” tab and
you will get a list of people and institutions followed by the people
you already follow.
Finnigan advises that if I were an accountant instead of a
journalist, I would think about companies where I wanted to work, and
look for accounting professionals there. Another way to find folks to
follow is to go to LinkedIn and use the “advanced search” option, which
allows you to search for people using keywords including company, title
and geographic location. Note to self: Spend some time increasing the
number of people I follow.
Once you’ve built up a good roster of people to follow, start
retweeting (forwarding) intriguing tweets by those people. You can also
write notes to them, using the “@” symbol and their Twitter handle. This
is a good way to build relationships.
3. Create content. This is the one thing I do,
albeit inconsistently. Of course I create content for a living, so it
makes sense for me to tweet out my articles. This is easy, since Forbes
has a Twitter button directly on my contributor page. But I am poor at
tweeting content other than my own. This is an important part of being a
strong Twitter user. I should be reading widely and tweeting links I
find intriguing.
If I were an accountant, I could also tweet out interesting
observations and articles. For instance, I might have just read about
transitioning from client-server financial software to cloud-based
software. I should tweet that article to my followers. Or if I worked in
energy, I could tweet an article about natural gas extraction. The more
interesting and relevant your tweets, the more likely you are to
attract followers.
4. Send private notes to potential mentors. This may
be the toughest tip to follow, since it requires maximum confidence.
But a great way to find a job is to reach out directly to someone in
your field and let them know that you are looking for new opportunities.
It’s best to do this after you have interacted with someone through
retweets or responses to tweets they have made.
Finnigan has experienced this himself.
“If someone reaches out to me out of the blue, I ignore that,” he says.
“But if someone has said, two or three times, ‘I watched your talk at
South by Southwest and thought you were dead on,’ or ‘Here’s another
article you might like on the same topic,’ and that allows me to make my
presentations better, I might be receptive.” Much of Twitter’s strength
is based on the assumption that participants will reciprocate.
An example of someone
getting a job using Twitter: At Jobvite, the head of design was being
followed by a number of people, including a designer in Canada.
The design chief writes a blog, gives talks, holds meet-ups and
publishes a lot of content. After following the design chief for some
time, the Canadian designer sent him a message, using the “@”symbol,
saying, “I like what you’ve been saying on Twitter and I agree with your
approach. If you’re ever looking to hire someone, give me a shout. I’d
love to work for you.” The design chief was indeed looking to hire a
designer and wound up giving the job to the Canadian.