Who do you know? If
your answer is no one, then you need to put some serious effort into building a
network.
“But I’m too busy,” you might be thinking.
That’s a common thought.
However, if you have a smartphone you can network on the go. How? With Twitter. The truth is that
most people with smartphones are already using various forms of social media
but they are using it to play on. How
about making that smartphone work for you by networking as you wait for the
bus, sit in the doctor’s office, stand in line at the grocery store, and many
of the other “waiting” activities that we do each day?
Start with a Twitter Account that is For Your Career
If you have a twitter account that you use just for fun then
just use that for fun. You should have
an account that is created specifically for your career and for
networking. Use your real name. You WANT employers to find this account. Use
a professional profile picture and take a bit of time to construct a good bio –
it’s like an elevator pitch for Twitter.
If you have an online resume you can link to that in your bio.
Now what?
Now you need to connect with people that you want to be in
your network. Don’t go all crazy trying to
connect with everyone. Start with people
that work at companies you would like to work for. You might follow recruiters or human
resources staff. Follow heads of
departments and managers.
How do you find these people? There are several ways that you can do this:
- Do a search for keywords on Twitter
- Use a tool like Tweeple.com
- Do a Google search for the company you want to work for and then look for names of people you can connect with; do a Twitter search for them.
Once you have found at least 20 people that you want to
connect with on Twitter and you’ve followed them, study their Twitter
feeds. What do they tweet about? Are they sharing links to articles? Read them
and the comment on them. You can comment
to the original poster by putting an @ symbol in front of their Twitter handle
and they typing your comment. They will
get notified and you will start to be on their radar.
Twitter is about more than just replying to people though.
You want to share your own interesting and industry specific tweets.
- If you read an article about your career field, tweet it.
- Tweet something interesting you’ve learned.
- Tweet updates to your resume (no more than once a week for this though).
- Tweet something about a company you’ve been researching.
When recruiters or others that may network with you come to
your twitter page (because they will if you are connecting with them) they
should find an interesting Twitter feed with good information.
Tweet on the Go
Once you have your career Twitter account set up you can add
stuff to it as you think of it. With the
Twitter app on a smartphone or an iPhone, you can tweet at people, respond to
tweets, or tweet something interesting in just a few seconds. Just passed the building of the company that
you want to work for? Take a picture of it and tweet and share what you like
about the company or why you want to work there. Think creatively!
Picture source: http://www.freeimages.com/photo/1165448
Picture source: http://www.freeimages.com/photo/1165448
