Do You Really Need To Use Twitter for Your Job Search?

I admit that I’m not much into the tweeting thing.  I get that it’s important, mostly because everyone says it is, and when it comes to social media and technology, I’m a lamb, here me “bahhhh.”   But, to my chagrin, I don’t use the tool to its full effectiveness.  How about you?  As a job seeker are you using Twitter to spread your resume around? And what about recruiters?  Are they really using it to find candidates?

According to Joe Turner of  The Ladders, the answer to all these questions is a resounding “yes!”  He writes,  “You can’t deny it.  Job seekers and recruiters have a love affair with Twitter.”

While recruiting, I have used the Twitter machine — in a limited fashion.  If I had a new job, I’d tweet about it, hoping folks would spread the word and maybe I’d get a few candidate names out of it. Nothing really evolved from these efforts though. And why should they?  It’s a completely passive approach to recruiting.

To me, tweeting about jobs is similar to putting an ad on a job board.  You throw it up there as an ancillary effort to find candidates, hoping to get some reward but having few expectations.  The reality is, I’ve never placed a candidate that I’ve found in any such manner.  I’ve always developed an action plan, based on a job description, and proactively called candidates who fit the bill — candidates who are employed and unemployed.  Would I still tweet a job?  Sure, why not?  It doesn’t cost me anything and if I build up enough followers, it’s an easy way to at least spread the word about something I’m working on.  Frankly, I use Twitter in a similar fashion to get people to read this very blog.

Joe also goes on to say that recruiters use Twitter — not only to post jobs — but to search through resumes.  Therefore, you, as the job seeker, should be promoting your resume on Twitter. He goes on to say, “Recruiters constantly use hashtags to locate potential candidates by searching words like ‘resume,’ certain skill sets, locations and so forth.  …you’ll want to incorporate hastags on your Twitter resume so you’ll be found when recruiters perform their searches.”

Hashtags?  A resume  on Twitter with 140 characters? How the heck do you do that?

Thankfully, Joe does a bang-up job explaining all of this.  I’ll paraphrase and you can read his article for additional info.  Basically, he says your Twitter job search post should have a link to your resume (using TinyURL or another short-link application) and should include key words, or hashtags (preceded by the # sign) that will attract recruiters.  He then goes on to say that your tweet should mention your desired job title and geographic location. “RT,” which means re-tweet,  should start off the entire posting as it will encourage your “followers” to forward your information on.

Do I think tweeting your resume is an absolute, imperative thing for you to do?  Nope. And, although I didn’t take a scientific poll, I did just have lunch with another digital recruiting friend who, like me,  said he and his partners don’t use Twitter to look for candidates either.

So, to tweet or not to tweet?  My feeling is, if you are billing yourself as a digital media expert, then you should probably go for it.  If anything, it shows that you are “up” on how to use social media tools to their fullest and this is an important factor for anyone who wants to make a name for himself in this highly innovative digital world.  If you are a lawyer, teacher, stock broker, or are in any other field,  for now, you can probably get away without tweeting your resume.  Talk to me in 6 months.  Things change so darn fast that I might think differently by then…

Carpe diem…