The new networking: How to find your dream job on Twitter
By Megan McChesney (@meganmcchesney)
Those in a position to hire you for your dream job are closer than you think, but you’ll need the right tools to find them.
Back in February, Marc Jacobs International was looking for a social media staffer. The company eschewed the standard job boards and headhunters and went straight to the medium itself, sending out a rallying cry from its Twitter account (@MarcJacobsIntl): “We are interviewing only people who are tweeting us. Be clever. Smart. Understand our DNA. Say it in one tweet! That is your interview!” One hundred and forty characters isn’t exactly a lot of space in which to shine, but this one tweet sums up the new world order if you’re hunting for your dream job. Never mind mixers and events and cold calls—if you want to be proactive about landing a plum gig, you need to take the party to social media.
Imagine meeting someone for the first time, someone you want to impress, and being forced to exchange dialogue in 140-character bundles. The conversation would obviously be bizarre, but you’d make sure every word counted, wouldn’t you? “There’s a lot of power in forcing people to be concise, and I think that’s one of the things that makes Twitter so powerful,” says Kat Tancock (@kattancock), a Toronto-based digital content and social media consultant.
It’s not the only thing making Twitter powerful. Data from the 2011 Social Recruiting Survey—conducted annually by Jobvite, a company that creates job recruitment software—showed that almost half of the respondents, primarily a mix of recruiters and employers, use Twitter to recruit for open positions.
But Twitter is actually one of the smaller pieces of the social media recruitment pie. Fifty-five per cent of respondents to the Jobvite survey use Facebook to find job candidates, and a commanding 87 per cent use LinkedIn. But when this new way of recruitment first took hold, there were inevitable transition pains. “I don’t think any recruiter would deny the fact that it was a little scary,” admits Vancouver-based Jackie Ross (@JRossRrecruiter) of JRoss Retail Recruiters, who’s worked for brands such as Club Monaco, Tommy Hilfiger and Holt Renfrew. “The initial predictions were that there would be no need for recruiters.” Where a well-stocked Rolodex was once a headhunter’s leg-up, now almost anyone can find and contact almost anyone else. But recruiters are still very much a necessity in this brave new world of networking—with so much information, someone needs to sift through it all. “The truth is that it’s turned out to be a very positive tool if used right,” says Ross. “It’s expanded our scope and reach, and it’s a great way to build relationships.”
The post The new networking: How to find your dream job on Twitter appeared first on FASHION Magazine.