How can Twitter Lists help Job Seekers? Top 400 job posters on Twitter

Twitter just released powerful new capabilities, called Lists. Sure, new technologies, gadgets, bells and whistles are announced every day, but this is a new feature that can really help job seekers.

In addition to describing what you ate for lunch, Twitter is becoming one of the primary publishers of job advertisements, as they take feeds from job boards, company websites, job board aggregators, newspaper help wanted ads, recruiters, and anyone else who wants to publish ads….for free.

One problem is that Twitter can provide TOO MUCH information to users, as it’s grown from a 1M users to over 50M users in a little more than 2 years. Tweets come so fast that it’s impossible to keep track of new ads that are being published, or even know which twitter accounts to follow.

Twitter Lists help the job seeker determine who to follow, and provides an aggregated feed of job ads…by list.

For example, I created 4 lists:

@philreCareered/jobtweets
@philreCareered/recruiters
@philreCareered/hiringmanagers
@philreCareered/jobseekers

I listed every twitter account I could find, and included in @philreCareered/jobtweets. I quickly built the largest list on twitter of job posts, which you can follow…aggregating a majority of job postings on Twitter into a single feed. You can also search this feed for jobs in Atlanta, or Tech jobs. I’ll continue to add to the list as I find additional accounts listing jobs (feel free to comment and suggest who to include on the list – please include the twitter names).

Basically, I created Twitter’s version of Top 400 Job Advertisers on Twitter.

A job seeker can use this in a number of ways. The easiest is just to follow my lists, with a single click. You’ll get a twitter stream of job postings, or a stream of recruiters and what they have to say, a stream of hiring managers (direct hiring companies). Or a job seeker can message me, asking for their twitter name to be included on @philreCareered/jobseekers.

Twitter lists can be described as a Themed list of Twitter users. You could create a list arranged around interest (baseball writers), by topic (Social Media), by type (College friends, family), etc. Even easier, you can find lists that have already been created that you can follow with just one click.

A job seeker can create a list of recruiters they like, or who are in their industry, either by searching on their own, or by using my lists (@philreCareered/recruiters) as a starting point (creating a sub-list of their own), combining with other recruiters they like (feel free to suggest recruiters to follow in the comments, including twitter names). An increasing number of companies and HR departments are tweeting jobs directly – I list the ones I find under @philreCareered/hiringmangers (again, any suggestions are welcomed – please include the twitter name).

Josh Catone of Mashable has a great basic “how to” article in Twitter Lists, suggesting 3 reasons to create lists at http://mashable.com/2009/11/02/twitter-lists-guide/trackback/ :

“ Create a Group – Because Twitter Lists create grouped tweet streams of the people that are on them, you can use Lists to organize your tweeps into groups based on anything you want. For example, we’ve created a list of everyone at Mashable. By viewing or following this list, you easily see what all of Mashable’s (Mashable) employees are tweeting about. You could do the same thing with your co-workers, family, or friends, or just group Twitter users based on location, subject, or anything else you can think of.

Recommend Cool Tweeps – One of the other intended purposes of Twitter Lists is to allow people to recommend other users to follow. You can create a public list of people you think other Twitter users should follow, then anyone else can visit that list and follow the people on it (or follow the list).

Follow People You Aren’t Following – When you follow a Twitter List, you’re not actually following every user on the list, but following the entire list — those users’ tweets aren’t added to your main stream. You can then visit that list and view its tweet stream. That’s why you can also use Lists to follow people without really following them. For example, if there are users whose tweets you’d like to follow, but whom you don’t necessarily want in your main Twitter stream (perhaps they tweet too often for your liking), you can add them to a list and then check up on their latest tweets every once in a while by viewing your list.”

You’ll also want to be careful about Twitter lists, because you have no control which lists your account turns up on. Online Reputation Management becomes critical to your job search (or current career) with Twitter lists. If you’re a passive job seeker, you might not want to turn up on a list of job seekers, since this is public information. On the other hand, if you’re an active job seeker, you’d want to be on job seeker lists, but avoid lists like “sure_things_in_atlanta” or “alcoholicfriends”.

Job seekers - I recommend investing a little time in Twitter Lists, to see how it can help your search, how you can use the feature to promote your job search, and manage your online reputation. It’s a powerful new tool that can give you additional info in your career change.

Executives exploring Career Change: For a free 30 minute resume consultation, or career advice for executives, email your resume confidentially to reCareered (phil.reCareered@gmail.com), and we'll schedule a time to talk.

Staff, Managers, Entrepreneurs, and career changers outside the US: Send your resume to phil.reCareered@gmail.com to enroll in a free group teleseminar "Accelerate Your Job Search - tools you can use".