How to use Twitter to get your first job / next job ?



When used effectively, social media has the power to make or break your career.  There was a time when CVs used to float every here and there with very less a candidate could do. Things have changed today. A candidate can be in touch with his potential employer almost every day.  All he need to do is to find out the right approach and build his case with the right set of people.

LinkedIn is the most powerful tool for professionals but you can’t ignore Twitter.
 It require continue efforts, dedication and discipline to get benefits from Twitter. There is no formula of success on Twitter.   I am going to highlight what I have realised will work when you would like to join your first or next company of your choice .
Twitter is a very powerful, relationship building, relationship management and customer service tool. And you can easily see the impact of it. Even government has started using Twitter as a tool to reach out the larger mass. Whether it’s MoE, Railways you will find Twitter is often being used to make the government smarter.
Here are the 5 things you should start doing on Twitter immediately.
  1. Relationship building : Relationship building is about “Why should I know you ? “.  You have to tell people who you are. You have to be known for something or you have to be expert in something.  I have seen people reluctant  in answering these questions including me. And then over the period of time I have realised there are always going to be people better than you. So you only focus on what you are and what you do. Don’t compete or set benchmarks. Just keep on improving and evolving by always learning something new, something  which  keep you relevant. Stay abreast and have opinion about everything happening around you.
  2. Relationship management: is about Why should people remember you? Most of the people who you will interact with, are just faces or ids. And there are plenty of them. And given the timespan of attention everyone has, it’s quite easy to forget you and your work. Building and management are different stuffs and you need to understand both require different efforts, tactics and contents.
  3. Monitor and interact with people working in the companies you want to work. Search the profiles of top leadership of the companies and then filter out their followers. In all possibilities, you will find someone who might be able to help you in your pursuit.
  4. Keep an eye on what  is trending in the industry you would like to join : Confidence comes from knowledge and fake confidence comes from Bluff. Whatever you choose, you got to have some relevant content when talking to your potential recruiter. You have to display your knowledge and work. Don’t invest money in some expensive or short term courses till the time you have done your first level research.
  5. Develop direct relationships with bloggers and journalists : Subscribe to their RSS feed, retweet, leave a comment and help bloggers to find each other.  Every blogger strive for followers and they all love to increase their posts. Similarly companies have their blogs where they share important announcements, educational posts, updates on their products. Don’t just like them, put some valuable comment. These blogs are highly monitored and there is a person who keeps track of all the comments. So this is a good way of engaging with someone from the the company directly you want to work in.
The first part has highlighted  “ What you should do “,  now “How you should do” :
  1. Setting up a right Profile is the first step for any social media: Profile serves two purposes.
    1. It’s a way a of telling people who you are when they land on to your profile
    2. It’s a way to let people discover you.  For ex. If I am making a search for Big Data, then Twitter search will find all the people who have mentioned “Big Data”  in their profile. Use correct key words in your profile.
  2. Lists : Lists is an excellent way to organise your followers and the people you follow. And if you quietly want to keep an eye on someone, just add them in a Private list without following them.  So I have created following lists which help me to easily find the tweets of people who are important to me :
    1. News
    2. Personal
    3. IBM
    4. Competitors of IBM
    5. Cloud
  3. Sharing content you have created : There is no dearth of the resources and tools which are free and which can be used to create some good content. Content can be following types :
    1. eBook
    2. Blogs
    3. Infographics
    4. Presentations
    5. Videos
  4. Choose whom to follow wisely : Your interest in logging in to Twitter depends a lot on the people whom you are following. The people whom you follow should be active, should share relevant contents, should have an identity and most importantly they should follow you back. If you follow someone, who has more than 1000 followers, and he follows you back then the chances of your content reaching to large audience increase manifold times.
  5. Use a Social Media publishing platform : You might not get time to publiish content regularly. and that’s when you should automate the content publishing. Use HootSuite to schedule your content across different social media platforms.  Choose a day most likely Sunday, when you will schedule your tweets for the entire week. And then be responsive to the likes, shares, followers you are getting. It’s like creating a campaign to attract leads.
I help people to build their social media eminence and make the most of it. Just ping me back in case you want to get in touch with me for any help with your Social Media.  

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