Using Twitter in your job search is probably not something you’ve considered before. LinkedIn, and even Facebook, which both have more obvious job searching capabilities, may seem like the best social channels to put your energy, but don’t write off Twitter just yet.
Here are a few unique ways to use Twitter in your job search.
Use the Unsaturated Market to Your Advantage
Hiring managers are all over LinkedIn, but so are job seekers. One of the greatest advantages for a job seeker using Twitter is that the job search market is not oversaturated on this social channel.
Use Twitter to build up your personal brand. Think of it like this: you are the product being marketed. Your skills, experience, and points of view are your selling points.
From there, follow a couple of your favorite companies or influencers in the space and look to Twitter’s suggestions for more people and companies to follow in the “Who to follow” section.
#Jobsearch
On Twitter, you can play around with hashtags in the search bar to track down jobs. I found some good ones by using combinations of my city and various industries. For example, #chicagojobs and #chicagotechjob pulled up some cool job postings.
Boolean Search
But, you can go a step further than that. Twitter has a pretty advanced search operator and allows for boolean search.
For example, you can type, “marketing OR sales” into the search window to generate Twitter posts with either or both of those exact phrases. Putting the phrase “marketing job” in parentheses means you want that exact phrase to be searched.
Putting spaces between words like, “Chicago marketing job” acts as an AND boolean search, pulling up twitter posts where each of those words is mentioned, but in any specific order.
Search by User
Want to keep an eye on tweets coming from specific companies? Just use the search formula “from:user” to pull up their tweets. For example, you can search “from:@kpmg” to pull up the company’s recent tweets.
Get even more creative by searching for specific terms within a user’s tweets. Combine the search functions like, “from:@kpmg marketing” to pull up tweets from the company that mention marketing.
If That’s a Bit Too Complicated…
If you need a little help with the search function, click the “Advanced Search” option in “Search Filters”.
From there, you can simply enter in the terms you want to search into the appropriate boxes.
Get the Inside Scoop
Here’s why Twitter is ideal for company research: the information hasn’t been groomed the way it is on other channels. There’s no big “About Us” page or testimonials to pad their reputation–just tweets and comments by clients, customers or even employees. Take some time to sift through tweets both from and to the company, asking yourself, “Is this a place I’d be proud to be associated with?”
Follow companies that are of interest to you, even if they don’t have job openings at the time. If a position does open up, just by making a habit of checking their pages often and utilizing the search functions above, you’ll be the first to see it.
When you’re eventually offered a job (and you will be!), you still have a decision to make. Twitter is a great place to learn more about company culture and reputation.
Now that you have another job search resource to use, make sure your resume is ready for the online application process by running it through Jobscan, below.
