Job Searching with Social Media For Dummies
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As your Twitter connections grow, your timeline moves faster and faster, increasing your chances of missing critical pieces of information, job postings, and relevant industry news. That’s where lists come in. With the lists feature on Twitter, you can drag-and-drop certain Twitter friends into categories. Each list only displays tweets from its members.

Twitter-management tools take advantage of this concept and very easily allows you to create, add to, and read lists. Twitter’s own native interface also allows you to create and manage list members.

Creating a list is easy. Simply go to Twitter, click in the right-top corner next to the gear, click on Lists, and then choose Create a List. You can title your list, write a short description, and mark it Public or Private.

If the list is sensitive, like a list of hiring managers at target companies, then you may want to make it private. If the list is topical, like a list of thought leaders in your field, then consider making it public.

You can subscribe to other people’s lists as well. When you do, you’ll be able to see the tweets from list members. So rather than re-creating the wheel and creating a new list of news feeds, you can just subscribe to this one. Then by creating a new column for just this list, you can read just breaking news without the distraction of other tweets.

You’re allotted 20 lists per Twitter account, and lists can’t begin with a number. Consider creating the following lists:

  • Local recruiters: Give this list an obvious name, like Michigan Recruiters or Dallas Recruiters.

  • Local job boards: Try to locate Twitter accounts that post job openings in your area, like @CAjobs or @RIjobsbot.

  • Personal friends: This list, which allows you to follow personal friends in your network, may be private.

  • Great companies: Having top-notch companies in a single list — especially the ones you’re targeting in your job search — can significantly simplify your research.

  • Top tens: You may want to list the best tweeps about a certain category, such as Best job search advice or Best nonprofit tweets.

About This Article

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About the book author:

Joshua Waldman, MBA, is an authority on leveraging social media to find employment. His writing has appeared in Forbes, Huffington Post, Mashable, and the International Business Times. Joshua's career blog, CareerEnlightenment.com, won the About.com Readers' Choice Award for Best Career Blog 2013. Joshua presents keynotes, trainings, and breakout sessions around the world for students, career advisors, and professional organizations.

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