Twitter: #FollowFriday for UK #Jobs Seekers

Friday, February 5th, 2010 - employment, job search, marketing, recruitment, tutorial

Twitter: #FollowFriday for UK #Jobs Seekers

Twitter is the social media of the moment, and many tout it as the solution for UK Job Seekers.

Twitter is a micro-blogging service, which you can think of as online mobile texting. You have 140 characters to say and send what ever you want. If people find what you say interesting, then they will follow you and listen to all of your micro-blogs, termed tweets. You can also follow other people and listen to their tweets.

Twitter: too much information?

I love twitter, and as engineer and technologist love its simplicity. But here is the problem I see as a recruiter personally for the  average IT aware UK Job Seeker, trying to get a job let alone market themselves:

• Twitter currently has 18million+ active accounts, and traffic is growing beyond 50% per month
• Many users have more than one account, tweeting the same stuff
• 18million users sending out 10tweets (messages) per day = 180million tweets
• You can probably find your friends, but how are you going to monitor the other useful stuff from the twitter stream?

This is where hashtags come in. Starting a word with a # such as in the case of #jobs turns it into a searchable term at Search Twitter, making it easier for others to find. Hence as a job seeker, you could search for the hashtag #jobs at Search Twitter (many recruiters, employers and job boards use that popular tag), and then watch what opportunity comes through.

The easiest way to monitor this stream is to click the orange coloured RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication – think of it as a stream of text language) from the resultant Search Twitter page, and feed it into an RSS reader like Google Reader (comes free with your gMail address – you just need to activate it). The RSS reader will then store the stream of messages, which you can then browse at a later date in your own time.

Twitter: UK #Jobs Seekers

If you are convinced Twitter should be part of your job search, but don’t think your technically savvy, then as your next step master hashtags and taking a Search Twitter stream for #jobs to your preferred RSS reader. If you accomplish that, then consider it a huge technical accomplishment, and one which many job seekers will not have the advantage of in their job search.

On the other hand, you could just follow these people, who I think you will find useful in your job search:

Note: I am not going to recommend any job boards. They already provide eMail alerts direct to your InBox, and secondly Twitter to them is just another way of telling you that a job is available – so its the same information already in your InBox

• JobCentre+: I find it ironic in light of the number of unemployed people and the UK Governments push towards technology, but presently there is no central JobCentre+ twitter feed. Hence you have to follow the hashtag #JobCentre, which you can do here
• Department of Business, Skills and Innovation: the department formally had different twitter accounts for its different divisions, but now just has one stream for everything,m including employment issues
• eskillsUK: the UK Governments initiative to up skill the UK workforce in IT and technology, facilitated by the Business and Information Technology Sector Skills Council
• Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development: the UK professional Human Resources/HR body
• Monster HR News: having said at the top that I wouldn’t include a jobs board, why am I including Monster HR News? Simply, its not a stream of jobs to over whelm your tweet stream, its a news stream of relevant employment information
• UKRecruiter: if you want to see what the UK world of recruitment is all about, then follow Louise Triance and the team at UK Recruiter. Lots of nice commentary above the press releases from other sources, all in one stream for you to follow
• OnRec: probably the best of the recruitment magazines, which covers recruitment, employment, HR and staffing issues
• Animal:if this a #FF for UK Job Seekers, why I am recommend you follow a Canadian? Animal is an experienced recruiter who runs and online radio show, that is useful for both recruiters and job seekers. Well worth listening to!
• Bill Vick: for the same reasoning that I included Animal, I am including American recruiter Bill Vick. As a job seeker, do look at his website XtremeRecruiting.tv which has many free to access videos, which are interviews with leading North American recruiters and movers in the field of employment. Great insights into how you should be addressing and thinking about key job search issues
• ChrisSlay: Chris runs Somerset based agency ERA Recruitment that deals with agency and gang mastering. But unlike some, he’s nice and wholly legal! Good commentary on recruitment issues, he also has a new website dealing in Job Descriptions
• Rob Crossland: Rob is CEO of Parasol Group, the UK’s largest contractor umbrella company. Lots of interesting tweets on contractor issues, as the occasional tweet on sport
• Andy Headworth: Andy is a consultant in new social media techniques that can be used in recruiting new employees. Sounds all sort of technical? Andy also gives a good easily digestible commentary for job seekers on the same issues
• CV4.biz: how could I not mention our own twitter stream? Please, this is my blog…!

I hope you find the list useful, and good twittering!

One last thought: if you think I should add any others to this list, then please drop me a tweet – Thank You!

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2 Responses to “Twitter: #FollowFriday for UK #Jobs Seekers”

1. uberVU - social comments Says:
   February 5th, 2010 at 3:30 pm

   Social comments and analytics for this post…

   This post was mentioned on Twitter by ianrmcallister: RT @tweetmeme Twitter: #FollowFriday for UK #Jobs Seekers http://cv4.biz/twitter-followfriday-for-uk-jobs-seekers/...

2. Most Tweeted Articles by Recruitment Experts Says:
   February 7th, 2010 at 10:43 am

   [...] interesting people and asking them to riff for a minute or two about… 2 Tweets Twitter: #FollowFriday for UK #Jobs Seekers | Professional CV Writing – CV4.biz If you are looking for a job and know about Twitter, then this #FollowFriday list is for UK [...]

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