How to Use Twitter in Your Job Search

How to Use Twitter in Your Job Search

Before starting, you should know that it’s common for recruiters to research their candidates online, and that background check includes your social networks. Some of them leave it at reading your blog or headlines, but others may want to know a little more about you.

 

If you’re not comfortable with that (or there is something there to hide), just change the privacy of your accounts, using a nickname or a different email address to the one on your CV. Remember that social networks are a showcase for the good things, but also for the not-so-professional ones.

 

Welcome to the kingdom of the blue bird!

Welcome to Twitter!

 

This social network has become really popular in recent years for improving direct communications between people: media coverage, and fan bases...

 

But it has also helped to increase the possibility of connecting and creating communities of interest through short texts of 140 characters. So, why don’t use this powerful tool in your job search? Let’s find a job tweeting!

 

If you’re one of the brave ones who include their Twitter account on their CV in order to have a complete, public profile for their job search, here are some rules you need to follow in your profile:

 

1. Consider what you tweet about and its relevancy. HR managers are not interested in knowing your favourite reality show character of the season.

 

2. Create content. This is partially related to the first rule. If you attach your Twitter account to your CV, it’s because has an added value, so create content according to that. Talk about the trends in the industry and connect with gurus and influencers. 

 

3. Select appropriate images. Party pictures are funny, and you may look gorgeous in a swimsuit, but neither of them would land you a job (unless within specific industries). Choose a good one for your profile, and pay attention to the ones you share.

 

4. Auto-promote yourself. Recruiters have tools (like Followerwonk.com) to look for candidates that have specific information and hashtags on their bios. Don’t miss the opportunity to expose yourself: describe your studies using words like #mba or #pharmacy, and roles (#intern and #manager). The hashtag #hireme is getting quite popular as well, so use it to explain to Twitter what would you like and it will come to you.

 

If you’re not into waiting and prefer to take a more active role, Twitter is your new job search tool. Hashtags, those pesky labels, are the key to job hunting by tweets, and although English is the common language for international recruitment with keywords such as #hiring and #joboffer, or the industries #IT, #marketing, etc.

 

You can use different cities’ names such as #barcelona, #dublin or #berlin, or even vocabulary for specific countries or languages. You just need to write it in the search box and look for results!

 

Here are some examples:

If you wanted to look for a job in France, you would use #emploi #boulot, in Greece #aggelliesergasias, and in Spain #trabajo and #empleo. For Italy, you can use #lavoro and #twesume, in Hungary #allasok #munka and for the Scandinavian countries, #nyttjobb #ledigstilling are the best ones.

 

#nyttjobb Tweets

You will find a lot of vacancies under these hashtags posted directly from recruiters but many job boards and aggregators have specific accounts for only job sharing. At Europe Language Jobs, for example, there is @allesterolavoro for jobs for Italian speakers and @jobtilbud for Danish-speaking vacancies abroad. It would be interesting to give them a follow as well.

 

Tweets by lavorare_estero

Also, big companies may have their own Careers Twitter account where they share advice, news and job offers like Adidas @adidasGroupJobs, TELUS Int @TELUScareers and Teleperformance Portugal @TP_Portugal or even Twitter @jointheflockEU itself. Also some of their recruiters will be on the network willing to meet interesting candidates.  Just look at the company you’re willing to apply to!

 

Tweets by TP_Portugal

Along with all these amazing possibilities, one of the coolest things about using Twitter as a job seeker is that the social network is not a common space for job searching, meaning that you will find much less competition than in traditional channels. 

 

However, you should take into account that it is still an evolving tool, and it could happen that in some countries or industries, it works better than others. But even in this situation, you stand out among the others. 

 

Don’t miss this hidden opportunity to succeed in your career but remember; be careful what you tweet!

 

AND DON'T FORGET TO FOLLOW US ON TWITTER   

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