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Finding a job on Twitter may sound like the 21st century equivalent of looking for labouring contracts in the local bookies – or, better still, the Nag’s Head – but thinking outside the usual jobsites and vacancies columns can pay serious dividends. Nope, Twitter isn’t just a place for slightly unhinged celebrity stalkers to sate their appetite for Lily Allen’s meandering nonsense. Twitter can be a powerful tool for finding student jobs and internships and full-blown, real-life, money-for-milk-actually-going-into-my-bank-account graduate jobs.

Essentially, the means can be split into indirect and direct. The former involves building the right ‘profile’ for prospective employers, cultivating relationships and generally being a genial tweeting presence – indeed, a bit like looking for labour in the Nag’s Head. The latter is much more like your traditional job-scouring, just given a 21st Century injection of techno-wizardry. This week we run through the indirect ways you can enhance your job prospects through Twitter.

Presentation, presentation, presentation

First things first – know your enemy. Or prospective line of employment, rather. Despite having limited capacity to play around with Twitter profiles (unlike Facebook, or, worse, Myspace), there are still several personalized aspects to a Twitter account which can filter the professional and appropriate jobseeker from a student drinking monologue. Choose a picture wisely – show your face, as users like to engage with what they imagine is a human being, but avoid those Faliraki holiday photos and pouting poses. If you have a blog, link it, particularly if it is relevant (journalism, graphic design). Enter your location properly – i.e. don’t write ‘in the sky with diamonds’. If you don’t want to commit too specifically, enter a region i.e. South-East, North-West et cetera. Under bio, you should be concise and relevant if you are on the job hunt. Indeed, writing “solicitor” or “web designer” is fine, even if you’re yet to gain employment in your chosen field. Finally, follow the same rules for your background wallpaper, which can be changed. Again, use your common sense. Plain colour, appropriate tiled landscape picture? Good. ‘Meat Is Murder’ banner? Bad. Employers will look, trust us.

Follow relevant people, and get chatty

This might sound like a no brainer, but an invaluable way of networking is adding people relevant to your chosen field. You may search for a certain company name, like Clifford Chance, FreelanceStudents or RBS, or individual people (Charlie Brooker) via the ‘Find People’ link. Another useful way of finding people or organisations is through lists, which may include scores of relevant Tweeters to follow. For example: enter ‘Guardian’ in the ‘Find People’ search box, click guardiannews, then go to ‘listed’ on the far right. Select a list that makes reference to news or politics (e.g. @Benshere/news) and hey presto, you’ll be presented with more useful media contacts to add to your collection. Play around and see who you can find, and never be afraid to add people: it’s part of the game. Some might even follow you back – another useful way to start cultivating relationships. Then: engage. Start ‘tweeting’ to people using the @ function (@[user-name] will publically ‘mention’ that user, making them aware of your presence). Ask for advice, guidance and information. Mention that you have useful skills. Barack Obama might not write you back, but that PR or recruitment consultant probably will. Better still, even if these actions are unlikely to result in you being recruited out of the blue, when a relevant job does come up at a certain company, your professional networking through Twitter will make you stand out from the crowd. As always, be appropriate when tweeting to potential work contacts – avoid text speak, don’t swear et cetera. Simples!

Read How to Find a Job on Twitter Part 2!

Have you tried to use Twitter to find jobs? Were you successful? Do you have any other tips?

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 at 7:58 am and is filed under How To, Web 2.0. 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.