There are many advantages to using Twitter for your career. It's a useful tool to find vacancies and to research the industry you're interested in, network, and promote yourself and your career interests. Find out more about using Twitter for your career.
How to use Twitter for your career
Find opportunities
- more than 500,000 jobs are advertised via Twitter each month. Follow official company accounts, use #hashtags, subscribe to relevant Twitter lists and tweet about your job search
- promote yourself through your profile and in tweets. Highlight any relevant work experience or blogs. You could also add your job pitch to your Twitter profile and/or include a link to an online CV. Similarly, promote your Twitter account (eg include it on your email signature or blog)
Make useful contacts
- follow people in the industry/sector you want to work in - use lists to find people who may be useful to you. Gain insider knowledge by following employers, professional bodies, influential people and news sources for your sector. If you follow people who share similar interest to you, they will often follow you back
- create relationships and engage in conversation - retweet and reply to other tweets. Offer feedback, answer and ask questions, get involved in discussions and give your opinion. Tweet links to interesting articles or news items, including the author or publisher’s Twitter handle
- demonstrate a passion - post interesting comments relating to what you want to do, useful websites, opinions/thoughts on industry news and topics
- include hashtags in your tweets to attract others with an interest in a particular subject to your profile.
- don’t just add people you know personally or think it’s only for celebrities. You may also prefer to have more than one account and use them for different purposes
Use Twitter for your research
- spend time to sort the relevant from the irrelevant. You also need to take the time to build up your profile and be mindful of Twitter ‘netiquette’
- read tweets to learn more about your sector. Twitter is a powerful research tool and offers direct access to an influential network. Tweets can give you a good idea of a company’s culture
- use Twitter to prepare for interview - prospective interviewer’s tweets may reveal their personality and present a good opportunity for an ice-breaker at interview