Twitter is Not About Me (or You) in a Job Search

I was reading the top posts for the week on Web Worker Daily and came across one on How To Monitor Online Conversations . The gist of the post was  how to track online mentions about your company, business, profession, and yourself. It suggested using a dashboard, filter feeds, and the right Twitter clients. As good as the post was, the comments sections were even better, packed full of links to more tools to find, filter, sort, cull and monitor online conversation. It is obvious that this is on the mind of enough SW programmers that a small market is in the making. 

That's when the light blub went on  for me about how I was using Twitter. I had bought into the notion that bigger is better with Twitter. I thought that the more people following me and that I followed the better regardless if they had something to offer or not. In some situations, that premise may work but when using Twitter for a job search as it misses the whole point.

Yes, it can be a delightful ego builder to have people follow you, @ respond and RT your posts. But unless you already have a superbly branded and well established reputation in your field that is extended visibly online, well being noticed on Twitter can be fleeting and ephemeral not to mention irrelevant for a job search.

If everybody already knows you and your reputation precedes you then you don't need Twitter to find a job.  Anyways, let's face it, none of us are Guy Kawasaki who can well afford to have paid staff find pithy things to link to that get volumes of RTs by the Twittermondi. It is not worth having the Joneses for this.  By the time you hit the big time with your Tweets the recession will be over, unless Twitter gets a wild hair to feature you.

Better that you  uncover search specific  data, dig out opportunity focused leads and other stuff that will advance your search. That is done, not by grasping for followers to hang on your every Tweet but by selective, well-orchestrated following by you of the right people and companies.  Enough with random follows of incessant blah blahs who tweet about various and sundry inanities that have nothing to do with your goals and objectives. You can't build enough Tweetdeck columns to accommodate the noise. 

Stay focused, follow only those people whose position, industry connections and knowledge as reflected in their posts, and job titles, can do your search some good. This is not even about meeting them but about learning their thought leadership, opinions and wisdom.   If you want to break into a field or sector this is crucial and will do you more good than other forms of online intelligence gathering as it it what the right people are saying right now.

The bonus is that you just might be able to strike up a conversation, build a relationship or two and get to know these folks. But you sure aren't going to accomplish that when you are focused on you own Tweets. Who cares how Joe Cool you come off using all the latest # jive?  Who cares how much you too RT Guy or Scoble or God?   It is not about you, it is about them.  And from them, how well do you capture what you need to help your job search progress?