Dan Finnigan loves Twitter. As the CEO of
Jobvite, a six-year-old company in Burlingame, Calif., he sells software
that enables companies to identify and source job candidates through
their employees’ social networks. Jobvite works through Facebook,
LinkedIn and Twitter, so those social media sites are essential to
Finnigan’s business. But he also strongly believes that Twitter is
gaining on LinkedIn as a great tool for finding employment.
Part of his conviction stems from a yearly survey Jobvite does that polls Americans about how they use social networks in their job searches. While job seekers are increasingly using social networks to look for work, Finnigan is especially impressed by the growth in Twitter use. Last year 26% of job seekers said they were using Twitter to find work. This year, the number jumped to 34%. Finnigan is convinced that percentage will continue to expand.
Even though I write about careers and leadership for Forbes, where we promote the use of social media to spread our journalism, I am embarrassed to say that I have been in the dark about how people use Twitter in their job searches. Dan was generous enough to share his wisdom. I’ve boiled down his advice to four points.
1. Create a Twitter account that showcases your professional profile. Finnigan recommends putting together your Twitter account as though it were your online business card. I realize I’ve failed to do this myself. When I created my account a couple of years ago, a friend helped me compose this clever-sounding line: “Old media hand swimming with the new tides.” But Dan points out that I would be better served by saying something like, “Senior Editor at Forbes where I cover careers and leadership.” I’ve also squandered the profile by including only Forbes.com instead of the link to my personal contributor page.
If you are not a journalist, but, say, an accountant, the same rules apply. Make your account information as specific and professional as possible, and on your profile, link to your own blog if you have one.
One of the reasons I have failed to do these things is my confusion about whether I am using Twitter for personal or professional reasons. What if I’m tweeting something about my teenager’s upcoming jazz combo performance? That’s not information I want to send to my professional network. Dan recommends an obvious trick that was lost on me: I can create another account for my non-professional interests. If you have a hobby, like raising English bulldogs or running triathlons, you can make an account that is devoted to that purpose, and keep your professional Twitter feed separate. Or simply maintain two accounts, one for personal and one for professional use.
2. Start following people and institutions. Figure out who the relevant people are in your field and become their follower. I admit to doing a poor job of this as well. It would be wise of me to pay attention to editors at the publications and websites where I might want to work someday and to become their follower.
Once you have identified some key people, Twitter makes it easy for you to find more people to follow. Click on the “who to follow” tab and you will get a list of people and institutions followed by the people you already follow.
Finnigan advises that if I were an accountant instead of a journalist, I would think about companies where I wanted to work, and look for accounting professionals there. Another way to find folks to follow is to go to LinkedIn and use the “advanced search” option, which allows you to search for people using keywords including company, title and geographic location. Note to self: Spend some time increasing the number of people I follow.
Once you’ve built up a good roster of people to follow, start retweeting (forwarding) intriguing tweets by those people. You can also write notes to them, using the “@” symbol and their Twitter handle. This is a good way to build relationships.
3. Create content. This is the one thing I do, albeit inconsistently. Of course I create content for a living, so it makes sense for me to tweet out my articles. This is easy, since Forbes has a Twitter button directly on my contributor page. But I am poor at tweeting content other than my own. This is an important part of being a strong Twitter user. I should be reading widely and tweeting links I find intriguing.
If I were an accountant, I could also tweet out interesting observations and articles. For instance, I might have just read about transitioning from client-server financial software to cloud-based software. I should tweet that article to my followers. Or if I worked in energy, I could tweet an article about natural gas extraction. The more interesting and relevant your tweets, the more likely you are to attract followers.
4. Send private notes to potential mentors. This may be the toughest tip to follow, since it requires maximum confidence. But a great way to find a job is to reach out directly to someone in your field and let them know that you are looking for new opportunities. It’s best to do this after you have interacted with someone through retweets or responses to tweets they have made.
Finnigan has experienced this himself. “If someone reaches out to me out of the blue, I ignore that,” he says. “But if someone has said, two or three times, ‘I watched your talk at South by Southwest and thought you were dead on,’ or ‘Here’s another article you might like on the same topic,’ and that allows me to make my presentations better, I might be receptive.” Much of Twitter’s strength is based on the assumption that participants will reciprocate.
An example of someone getting a job using Twitter: At Jobvite, the head of design was being followed by a number of people, including a designer in Canada. The design chief writes a blog, gives talks, holds meet-ups and publishes a lot of content. After following the design chief for some time, the Canadian designer sent him a message, using the “@”symbol, saying, “I like what you’ve been saying on Twitter and I agree with your approach. If you’re ever looking to hire someone, give me a shout. I’d love to work for you.” The design chief was indeed looking to hire a designer and wound up giving the job to the Canadian.
Source: forbes
Part of his conviction stems from a yearly survey Jobvite does that polls Americans about how they use social networks in their job searches. While job seekers are increasingly using social networks to look for work, Finnigan is especially impressed by the growth in Twitter use. Last year 26% of job seekers said they were using Twitter to find work. This year, the number jumped to 34%. Finnigan is convinced that percentage will continue to expand.
Even though I write about careers and leadership for Forbes, where we promote the use of social media to spread our journalism, I am embarrassed to say that I have been in the dark about how people use Twitter in their job searches. Dan was generous enough to share his wisdom. I’ve boiled down his advice to four points.
1. Create a Twitter account that showcases your professional profile. Finnigan recommends putting together your Twitter account as though it were your online business card. I realize I’ve failed to do this myself. When I created my account a couple of years ago, a friend helped me compose this clever-sounding line: “Old media hand swimming with the new tides.” But Dan points out that I would be better served by saying something like, “Senior Editor at Forbes where I cover careers and leadership.” I’ve also squandered the profile by including only Forbes.com instead of the link to my personal contributor page.
If you are not a journalist, but, say, an accountant, the same rules apply. Make your account information as specific and professional as possible, and on your profile, link to your own blog if you have one.
One of the reasons I have failed to do these things is my confusion about whether I am using Twitter for personal or professional reasons. What if I’m tweeting something about my teenager’s upcoming jazz combo performance? That’s not information I want to send to my professional network. Dan recommends an obvious trick that was lost on me: I can create another account for my non-professional interests. If you have a hobby, like raising English bulldogs or running triathlons, you can make an account that is devoted to that purpose, and keep your professional Twitter feed separate. Or simply maintain two accounts, one for personal and one for professional use.
2. Start following people and institutions. Figure out who the relevant people are in your field and become their follower. I admit to doing a poor job of this as well. It would be wise of me to pay attention to editors at the publications and websites where I might want to work someday and to become their follower.
Once you have identified some key people, Twitter makes it easy for you to find more people to follow. Click on the “who to follow” tab and you will get a list of people and institutions followed by the people you already follow.
Finnigan advises that if I were an accountant instead of a journalist, I would think about companies where I wanted to work, and look for accounting professionals there. Another way to find folks to follow is to go to LinkedIn and use the “advanced search” option, which allows you to search for people using keywords including company, title and geographic location. Note to self: Spend some time increasing the number of people I follow.
Once you’ve built up a good roster of people to follow, start retweeting (forwarding) intriguing tweets by those people. You can also write notes to them, using the “@” symbol and their Twitter handle. This is a good way to build relationships.
3. Create content. This is the one thing I do, albeit inconsistently. Of course I create content for a living, so it makes sense for me to tweet out my articles. This is easy, since Forbes has a Twitter button directly on my contributor page. But I am poor at tweeting content other than my own. This is an important part of being a strong Twitter user. I should be reading widely and tweeting links I find intriguing.
If I were an accountant, I could also tweet out interesting observations and articles. For instance, I might have just read about transitioning from client-server financial software to cloud-based software. I should tweet that article to my followers. Or if I worked in energy, I could tweet an article about natural gas extraction. The more interesting and relevant your tweets, the more likely you are to attract followers.
4. Send private notes to potential mentors. This may be the toughest tip to follow, since it requires maximum confidence. But a great way to find a job is to reach out directly to someone in your field and let them know that you are looking for new opportunities. It’s best to do this after you have interacted with someone through retweets or responses to tweets they have made.
Finnigan has experienced this himself. “If someone reaches out to me out of the blue, I ignore that,” he says. “But if someone has said, two or three times, ‘I watched your talk at South by Southwest and thought you were dead on,’ or ‘Here’s another article you might like on the same topic,’ and that allows me to make my presentations better, I might be receptive.” Much of Twitter’s strength is based on the assumption that participants will reciprocate.
An example of someone getting a job using Twitter: At Jobvite, the head of design was being followed by a number of people, including a designer in Canada. The design chief writes a blog, gives talks, holds meet-ups and publishes a lot of content. After following the design chief for some time, the Canadian designer sent him a message, using the “@”symbol, saying, “I like what you’ve been saying on Twitter and I agree with your approach. If you’re ever looking to hire someone, give me a shout. I’d love to work for you.” The design chief was indeed looking to hire a designer and wound up giving the job to the Canadian.
Source: forbes