If you’re like most regular college students, you’ve probably already immersed yourself in the social networking scene. You probably have a Facebook account, but do you have a Twitter account as well?
Twitter is quite different to Facebook in many ways. It’s kind of the equivalent to a social gathering among professionals, rather than a site to catch up with friends.
Knowing that a large number of professionals and business people like to use Twitter to keep their followers up to date with what’s happening within their companies means you can exploit this to help improve your employment prospects.
Here are some tips for using Twitter to expand your professional horizons:
1. Search for Tweets About Job Postings and Internships
Plenty of companies tweet about internships opening up or job positions becoming available. Search through Twitter profiles of various companies, businesses or people who tweet these things within your preferred field and start following them. When they do tweet about an opening that comes up, you’ll be among the first to find out about it.
2. Search for Respected People within Your Chosen Field
Let’s say for example that you’re aiming at working in a marketing company. Look up some respected names within the marketing field and start following them on Twitter. You can learn some industry tips from them or end up meeting others who are interested in your particular field. You just never know when one of those people might hear about an opening for work in your area.
3. Search for Companies and Businesses
Search for some of the companies or businesses within the field you want to work in and start following them. They may not always post tweets about job openings, but then again, they might. Besides, it can’t hurt to become familiar with the businesses or companies you’re hoping to find work with. This could be a good way to increase how much you know about what they do and the type of people they prefer to hire.
4. Ask for Assistance
If you do see a tweet announcing a job that interests you, or an internship, send a direct message to the professional who posted it and ask for assistance with how to contact the company or the person responsible for hiring interns. Be professional and polite with your communication and you’ll find that people will be usually only too willing to help you out. In fact, they may even be pleased you took the time to check who the right contact person is for the position you’re interested in.
5. Keep It Clean
Remember, if you’re using Twitter to look for work, you can guarantee that your potential future employer will be using the same social networks to check you out too. There are those who believe that you should completely clean up your profile and all your tweets as well, but this is just taking things a bit too far. You should still be expected to have a life and still be happy to keep friends and family up to date with what you’re doing. But obviously rant sessions or admitting to certain things you did during a drunken party that really wouldn’t be becoming of a professional employee should be avoided. Just keep it clean, because you never know when an employer could be watching.
These are really simple tips, but you might find that searching for the right businesses and people to follow can take a little time. Be patient and keep in mind that it will be worth the effort in the long run.
Who knows? You might end up making a professional connection that could be the stepping stone you needed to get your career going on the right foot.