Social Media is drawing masses of attention. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and 800 other social web 2.0/3.0 applications are all competing for market share. You might be asking yourself  “how can I make use of these tools?” “How can they help me find a job?” That is a great question. One that deserves a great answer. Alison Boyle over at jobsearch.about.com addresses how to use twitter in your job search efforts. I wanted to expand on that post somewhat.

Twitter is a fast and simple way to digest a lot of information. Not only can you keep in touch with your contacts, it can help you get career advice, and quite possibly help in your job search.  Statistics show that job search networking is much more effective when you make ‘loose’ connections – touching base with people beyond your immediate circle . Whose networks and contacts are considerably different from your own. With over 4 million users, Twitter offers a fantastic opportunity to create  flexible extended networks.

There are a lot of companies and job boards posting their job openings on Twitter. Job seekers regularly network  & ‘tweet’ with each other  to help expand their job search. Career experts frequently post advice, links to even more advice, and provide critical job market news.

Now your next question should fall along the lines of…..drum roll please. How do I find these jobs? How do I filter out all the noise? Twitter is notorious for providing too much information. Maybe too much for one person to digest.

That is where Twitter’s API (and the tools it has given rise to) come in quite handy. A couple of  tools worth mentioning are Twhirl & Tweetdeck. Both of these are Adobe Air applications. Both are highly configurable. There’s a head to head review over at Mashable.  I just so happen to like Tweetdeck for some reasons and Twhirl for others. Both are highly intelligent well thought out applications, that have been improving since they first appeared. Let me tell you about some of the reasons why.

Tweetdeck interfaces directly with the main twitter time line through its API. It is a standalone app. It can alert you when you have an update, @reply, or DM with a small dialogue and a ding (which can thankfully be turned off). It’s way more useful than the web interface everyone is familiar with. The search feature is my personal favorite. You can open 2 concurrent search windows, both monitoring the twitter time line for a keyword (I currently monitor several keywords like , #jobs, # jobsearch, @jobshouts). Tweetdeck is my favorite for use with my personal twitter account.

Twhirl is another twitter app. Very much like Tweetdeck, it is in constant communications with twitter through the API. Twirhl is unique in that it can manage multiple twitter accounts, as well as friendfeed, indenti.ca, seesmic, and laconi.ca. I use it for our @jobshouts twitter account. I also peek around friendfeed to see what the SO/ME experts are doing/talking about. I like the way Twhirl handles search requests. You can have multiple tabs for your search window by activating a search phrase. Then you can start a new search. I run about 8 current search phrases.

Let’s put this into perspective for todays job seeker. Say your looking for a job as an sales manager, or nurse. You click on the search icon, which will give you a text field to input “sales manager” or “nurse”. You will see results in a search window. I just searched the recent timeline for those phrases and instantly pulled in 100 results. Drill down much further by adding your city or state in the search phrase to filter the results to your location. Add other locations that you may want to work to your search.

Open a second(or third, fourth, fifth) search window. Mix up your search phrase somewhat play with it. Use the twitscoop to see what is hot in the tagcloud. Play around with it, It’s a great utility. Connect with people that have similar interests, careers, network!

Hold on to your seats because there’s more, leave those search windows open all day or night. It will update automatically! Click on read, remove the ones you have read or replied/faved. Then watch new tweets in real time. Talk about having an edge!

Spend the 20 minutes or 2 hours or whatever it takes you to figure out how to use these useful tools. All you need is a free twitter acount and the free software. Your small investment of time could land you the dream job you desire.

I had a few doubts about twitter at first. Then I discovered these apps, and those doubts disappeared. That and the talk of real-time search moving more and more into focus. Gives me hope that the online job search can move into the phase were candidates can find jobs that are recent, real, and responsive.

Good luck and happy job hunting!

Hopefully someone will find this useful.

Mike

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Tags: Job Searching in 2009, Technology, Twitter