Using Twitter to help you find jobs
A co-worker of mine showed me this simple way to stay in the loop when it comes to finding a new job. It’s so simple, I dont’ know why I didn’t think of it sooner.
- First you need a Twitter account. If you don’t have one, get a free one here.
- Once that’s setup you need to get a Twitter client like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck. The reason is that you can setup a stream based on search criteria.
- Create an account on one of these services and link your Twitter account. If you don’t know how to use these tools, there’s lots of help available on their web sites.
- Now, what you want to do is setup a search stream for the job title and location that you are looking for work. For this example, I’m looking for Business Analyst jobs in Vancouver so I create a search stream with “Business Analyst” Vancouver and save it.
- If there are jobs out there, you should start to see a bunch of Tweets with links to job postings.
- Set up as many keywords as you like for the types of jobs your looking for.
It’s that simple. Now the new stream you just setup will flow with tweets that contain the keywords “Business Analyst” Vancouver.
Happy job hunting!
** Update Aug 6th, 2012
Just read a article today about this subject in Business In Vancouver. Ranstand did a survey which shows some relevant and interesting stats about using social media for job Hunting.
The survey found that online jobboards (72%) and newspaper advertisements (55%) are still the most common places Canadians look for jobs, with only 22% of Canadians using social media sites in their job hunting.
22% is a good sized chunk and i’ll bet it continues to grow as it takes market share from the newspaper.