Six Steps to Finding Jobs Using Twitter
Six Steps to Finding Jobs Using Twitter
DaVinciDeb: Twenty years ago your options for finding a job were these: pound the pavement, mail a resume or search the classified ads. In the mid-1990s, change first arrived in the form of Monster.com, created by Jeff Taylor, and later with Craig’s List, created by Craig Newmark. Many employers instantly became victims of their own success. They quit posting job listings on these services because the response becomes overwhelming – in terms of bandwidth and managing piles of resumes.
With the unemployment predicted to exceed 7.5 percent for January and rise to 8.9 percent by August, the nation faces a challenge unseen since the 1980s. According to Forbes, January layoffs will climb to 162,962 at 500 of the largest publicly held U.S. companies.
Some people are now finding themselves in need of a job, with no experience in this new environment for finding work. Highly paid employees are often the first to go. Some of these employees have worked for the corporation since graduating from college or have been steadily employed for 20-plus years.
Finding a job for many Americans is about to become their new full time job. So, who will get the jobs? The folks with the best contacts, of course. Armed with creativity and determination, many are about to embark on a lower stress journey because they were introduced to Twitter.
So how do you regain control of your life? Now is the perfect time for someone who finds themselves jobless, as well as those poor souls waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Reposition” will become the catch word for this period.
Some may reflect on this time as a blessing in disguise. Did you ever jealously gaze out the window at the guy flying kites with his children on a week day. Or, maybe you drove by the guy riding a bike. Maybe you saw a friend in casual clothes enjoying a stroll through an open air shopping malls? Some have discovered their niche as an independent contractor.
In recent months, Twitter has emerged as the hot topic. The reason: the hottest online tools have been built quickly in response to demand from the growing numbers gravitating to Twitter. It turns out Twitter is the perfect tool for these times. It is no wonder marketing professionals have proliferated like a virus on Twitter. For branding, linking into an industry, or repositioning yourself for a new career, there may be no network equal to Twitter. And it is free.
Though Twitter is all over the media and Internet as a vibrant social network, it is also a powerful business tool. Twitter is a way to tell the world what you’re doing in 140 characters or less!
Using Twitter’s tools, hundreds and thousands are linking up. The many Twitter possibilities for the business user:
1. Attract others of the same mind
2. Find existing projects of interest and individuals doing similar work
3. Gravitate to subjects of interests
4. Positioning themselves for their next career move
Leveraging Twitter with skill can yield surprising results. And yes, you can radically improve your odds of connecting with your next employer.
Fire off a brief comment, observation, or goings-on in your day. Whether you’re “eating an apple” or “looking forward to the weekend” or “heading out of town” – it’s all twitter-worthy, as long as you say it with style. During a downtime, you can also mention your job search or interest in a business startup. So how do you establish yourself on Twitter?
1. Establish a Credible Presence. Twitter communication happens with short bursts of information, so it acts as a conduit to web pages. As soon as possible, create an online resume that describes your strengths and interests. Add links to this page on your Twitter background and bio so people can check you out.
2. Define Your Community. Use both Twitter search and Twellow to find others in your field. Search for people with similar backgrounds and interests and start following those who are both influential people and though leaders. These people will often drop breadcrumbs of information along the information highway that you can leverage.
3. Post Consistent Updates. You don’t have to spend countless hours on Twitter or feel obligated to post something new every hour. A few daily updates will do. Your posts need to position you as someone who is bright, articulate, and thoughtful. You also need to convey you are knowledgeable or expert in your field.
4. Engage Key People. The easiest way to engage someone is to reply to one of their posts. Not everyone responds. Keep at it, though. An ally is only a few taps of the keys away. Offer advice, state your opinion (positively), direct readers to obscure and not-so-obscure resources. Another option: re-tweet one of their posts.
5. Build Relationships. Once you get a response, work towards building an ongoing relationship. Wear your sales face: It’s okay to ask for help (but avoid seeming desperate). Not crucial, but it may pay dividends to have others review your communications. (I can recommend someone who is good.) If you let people know that you are looking for a job, your initial conversations may be about those who are hiring and what kind of skills they are seeking. Your objective: Find the dots and connect them to a prospective employer. Most are happy to help.
6. Refine Your Target Search. Once you know who your top prospects are, do some additional searches and find other people who work for that company. Learn the language, the culture, and find out who the decision-makers are when it comes to hiring.
Tworkups: Businesses are going organic. Instead of jumping through hoops of employee/employer relationships, the savvy are finding contract work. I see a new era emerging as we become more involved in the social networking world. One is the emerging work projects that I call a Tworkup. Still on the cutting edge, it refers to a group working on a joint project. Some tworkups happen in a common location, but most combine the activities of people who are physically present with those working virtually.
The nature of Twitter is spontaneity. Tworkups most often happen spontaneously with very little lead time. Started as an organic system for recruiting volunteers, tworkups have now evolved into quick-deadline, contract-labor projects for small- and medium-size businesses.
Tworkups are ideal for small, short-duration projects performed by a community where prospective participants are both known and talented in the fields they are being asked to work in.
This whole process of using Twitter to find your next job will make you better informed, better networked, and far-better prepared for the next chapter of your life.
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About Deb Frey
Named Vice President of the popular counter-culture think tank, DaVinci Institute in 2003, Montana native Deb Frey is the author of the forthcoming Twittering DaVinci. Using the screen name, DaVinciDeb, she has become an overnight celebrity in the microblogging world of Twitter. Building on her reputation and growing expertise, Deb assists individuals and businesses in successfully establishing relationships in her monthly Twitter Boot Camps.
Because of the interlinking nature of the Web, Deb also coordinates marketing through other social networking sites including Meetup, LinkedIn, Facebook, Plaxo and MySpace. Her marketing efforts have driven the DaVinci Institute membership growth – as well as a tradition of excellent speakers and programs. As a result, many recent institute events have “sold out” with waiting lists of people wanting to attend.
Deb is a “shirt sleeves” administrator at the Institute, referring to herself on occasion as the “chief cook and bottle washer.” Her official responsibilities: Member Relations, Marketing, Online Networking, Event Planning and Project Scheduling.
Deb richly enjoys working with the Institute’s many members and meeting the diverse professionals who attend speaker’s events that have featured talks by such science luminaries as Robert Zubrin (author of Energy Victory); journalists including the Denver Business Journal’s editor Neil Westergaard; and pioneering entrepreneurs Dave Lester of Treeless Systems LLC and Scott Tibbits, CEO of Starsys Research Corp, as well as many others. “Their enthusiasm for what they do is contagious,” Deb said.
When she can steal time away from other duties, Deb also serves as a contributing editor to the Impact Lab, the DaVinci Institute blog billed as “a laboratory of the future human experience.” Through her work, Deb is evolving as an expert in the latest trends in research, news reviews, topical studies, and all the “crazy stuff” ignored by mainstream media.
