The Six Faces of Twitter Recruitment

This first appeared on my blog at demaionewton.wordpress.com.  I hope that it is helpful to you in your job search.  Please share your thoughts, ideas, and insights that are inspired by the story.

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My friend Moises Lopez of Accenture (@Moiseslopez) is a top tier recruiter. His wisdom and insights have been invaluable to me into how an organization can efficiently and effectively secure talent using traditional, online, and social networking methods in a time when 14 million are unemployed and millions more are actively looking for work and better work.

A while ago, Moises and I were talking about social networking and recruitment. He explained how he amassed over 16,000 followers on Twitter. Today, he has over 17,000 followers. This is extremely helpful in getting the word out when Accenture needs talent. It also demonstrates the adage, the big get bigger. It’s easier to grow a large following when you’re big than it is when you are small.

I could repeat the wisdom of Moises and his insights, and have in several keynotes including my recent one with the Canadian HR Reporter, Navigating the Deep, Dark, and Dangerous Waters of Social Network Recruitment (http://www.carswell.com/description.asp?docid=8388). It is definitely helpful to collect and repeat the insights of others. But, I often feel that direct experience provides deeper wisdom and insight.

So I began building a Twitter following for BetterJobsFaster (@BetterJobsFaster) and my own work (@DeMaioNewton). In a little over a month I achieved 300 followers; in 2 months 600, and in 3 months 1,300. I have a long ways to catch Moises at 17,000, and an even further way to catch someone like Guy Kawasaki (@GuyKawasaki) at 437,000 followers, but my experience has been helpful.

There are 6 faces of recruitment on Twitter. They are:

1. The Job

These tweets are simply pushing out the jobs into the Twitter-verse for job seekers to be aware. They typically appear like this:

There are job boards, job aggregators, and social network companies that will tweet jobs in this fashion. Personally, I find these jobs annoying as they’re just mini-classifieds.  How much time do you spend reading the “national” classified ads.  Not much.

Here’s a better example from Moises:

 Three things to notice that are different:

1.  
   
   
   1. It has Moises face, whereas the first has the faceless logo for CJ Jobs.
   
   
   2. It doesn’t include the Twitter garbage text of #’s and @’s.  Notice the punctuation on the first:  #, (, ), -,  and …  Ntoice that Moises used only a . and shortlink.
   
   
   3. It has a call to action, “Visit our career page now.”  It doesn’t say, “apply now.”  This is a smart move as most people you wouldn’t want to apply.  You should want people to explore a little more than 140 characters before applying.
   
   

Here’s another very good example:

Notice how this says the job, location, invites the candidate to read more, and apply.  All in 140 characters.  Read More and Apply offer 2 calls to action for the candidate.  Great work @achgcs.

2. The Hook

These tweets are designed to get you to click the link.  Unlike the job, these are more compelling and invite you to learn more.  Here’s two examples:

3. Insights to Applicants

These tweets are designed to help job seekers to successfully navigate the application process, help the applicant learn more about the organization, and for the employer to increase qualified applicants. They are interesting and quirky and compel you to click the link.  Here’s 3 examples:

4. Job Seeker Help

These tweets provide information, guidance, or support for job seekers.  Monster, newspapers, and other career companies will often use helpful support and guidance to help job seekers be better and will connect them to relevant jobs when and after they view the content.  Here’s 3 examples:

5. Status Updates

Recruiters will update the status of their jobs.  This is usually done by small businesses and individuals.  But it can also be done by large organizations.  Check out the ones from @scene_queen_ca and @UPSjobs:

6. Brand Building and Reinforcement

Companies will use Twitter to share some of the great things they are doing, build their brands and reinforce them.  The best companies will blend in their recruitment tweets with their brand and mission tweets.  Here’s 3 examples:

I hope that sharing with you the 6 Faces of Recruitment on Twitter provides some meaningful insights to employers in their recruitment efforts and for job seekers trying to find meaningful work, connect to companies that are a great place to work, and that will help them achieve their career potential.