“For the uninitiated, here’s how Twitter works: I have no freaking idea. I have no idea how it works – or why it exists." – Jon StewartRT @Bogie99: @IngridBergman: Here's looking @you kid #PlayItAgain.
PhillyJobs.com recently posted an article about Twitter and the job search. I decided that it was time to address the great world of Twitter in my column. You can’t escape it. I mean, how else would you know where Kourtney Kardashian is partying to or what Lady Gaga is eating or what time your friends went to bed? (And seriously? Britney Spears is the most followed person on Twitter? Not sure if that says something more about Britney or about America).
According to the latest statistics, nearly 142 million Americans use at least one social networking site. That’s nearly half your neighbors. Over 120 million of those are on Facebook. But Twitter only has 20 or so million users in the US; that’s a sixth of what Facebook has. That’s even a third less Americans than those still on MySpace (but statistics indicate that only 18 million are ‘active MySpace users’, and most of them are probably your 11-year old niece and some annoying emo band.) But even so, Twitter (along with LinkedIn and its 35 million domestic users which I’ll get into another time) seems is the go-to place for job hunting the in social network world.
I happen to really enjoy Facebook. I think it’s a wonderful innovation for many purposes, from connecting to former kindergarten classmates to tending to fake farms and mafia families (which, I’ll tell you, I don’t get). But it’s also a great job hunting tool for networking - I even got this gig that way - but not optimized to do so. I was an early adapter of MySpace and Facebook and all that Web 2.0 stuff, but I never warmed up to Twitter. I mean, I just didn’t get it. Unless I wanted to follow famous people (which I really don’t), wasn’t it the same as posting and reading Facebook updates without all the other cool features? And, if you’ve ever read my columns before, I am not one to often limit what I say to 140 characters. It takes me just that long to say hi. Twitter, it seemed to me, was for twits.
But as I eased into the Laid-Off Life, I reached out to my social network for advice in the job search. One particularly astute friend, who was a professional in the human resources field, suggested some ways to look using Twitter. The idea didn’t really excite me, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. I created an account, looked up a smattering of friends to ‘follow’ (friends clearly more interesting than I), and there I was, a full-fledged resident of the Twitterverse. Let the cyber-partying begin.
My HR friend suggested a couple of the top job search tools on Twitter for me to try: tweetmyjobs and tweetajob. I didn’t know that Twitter had this kind of interaction. The sign-ups were rather similar to creating traditional searches on CareerBuilder or PhillyJobs.com. Plug in the location where you’re job searching and the field you wish to be employed in, and bam, you’re following ‘Philadelphia writing’ or ‘South Jersey carpentry’ or ‘Schwenksville barista’, and boom, it’s right there in your feed along with Justin Bieber’s hair report. A tweet will appear in your stream like: “Jobs_in_Philly #jobs Creative Graphic Designer - Horsham, PA US: Categories: Media: http://bit.ly/cHE26W”, with a shortened URL link right to the job posting. And another site, TwitJobSearch, is a great search engine that aggregates the listings from a lot of these sorts of Twitter job feeds. What could be simpler?
But don’t confuse simplicity with effort, or as the late, great UCLA coach John Wooden said, “Do not confuse activity for achievement”. Just because all these great job leads are being funneled directly to you doesn’t mean that you just mass-apply for every interesting job and wait. Twitter is very immediate, but it’s no different than finding jobs in any other way. The word ‘lead’ is the proper terminology here. Because that’s all they are, just leads. Now you must apply the effort. Take these job suggestions and do the same due-diligence you would applying for any other job. Research, plan, follow up. And it’s not just job services; your Twitter (and other SNS's) friends can help you find a job, point you towards a job lead, or give you a reference. And honestly, it doesn’t even have to be people you know. These sites allow you to connect with people you don't know, based on common interests or career fields.
But just because I’m on Twitter and I use it to help find jobs doesn’t mean I understand the point of Twitter or the relative mass appeal of it. I feel I could stand outside Girard Station and yell “I’m having waffles for breakfast!” at passersby and get the same results. I even recently learned that 60% of Twitterers quit the service within the first month, presumably because they just don’t get the allure either. But I’ll stick with it. I have RW (that’s ‘real world’) friends that I follow, and I do follow a couple famous people I find interesting. I highly suggest you follow the actor Josh Malina (@JoshMalina) - he's hilarious - and author Elizabeth Wurtzel (@LizzieWurtzel) - she's brilliant - and you can follow me there too (@PhillyPartTwo). But, back to my point, I am indeed using it for things like the job search, and with good luck and my own due-diligence, maybe one of those leads will turn in to a job.
In the meantime, hopefully I can use my newly-found knowledge that "This week's Real Housewives of NJ was a little too real" from @teresa_giudice for good instead of evil.
Michael Hochman
LaidOffLife@yahoo.com ? Laid-Off Life on Twitter ? Laid-Off Life on Facebook
Michael is a Copywriter, Creative Marketer, and Broadcasting Professional still in search of full-time employment after 11 months of full-time job hunting, thanks to an “involuntary career sabbatical”. A Philly native and Syracuse graduate, Michael will gladly accept any job offer you may have for him. Any. Really. Please give me a job??
"Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called everybody, and they meet at the bar." - Drew Carey
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