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One of my best friends, who had been working as a recruiter for a large London company for quite some time now, called me up about a year ago and asked me whether I was using twitter regularly.
I replied, rather jokingly, that I wasn’t too keen on sharing what I’d had for breakfast with the rest of the world.
As you might probably imagine, rather than laughing at my joke (which, of course, wasn’t funny at all), he uttered a simple:
‘Well, start using it then. Now.’
He stressed so hard on the last word that it almost gave me the hibbi gibbies (Google it).
As I grew ever so curious, I one day decided to re- activate my twitter account and start using it again; I wanted to find out what on Earth was all the commotion about.
It was nothing special, really; granted, it did give you access to an unbelievably vast array of information and data in a somewhat structured and user- friendly manner.
Yet, I couldn’t stay on for more than five minutes and did not, at any point, feel like sharing a picture of what I had for lunch with the rest of the world.
As I was browsing the World Wide Web a couple of months ago, however, I stumbled across an article which struck me as quite unbelievable:
<< http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/how-disney-and-5-other-top-employers-use-twitter-to-recruit/ >>
To summarise the above, it would seem that, recently, the world had turned into a stupendously bizarre place. To be a bit more specific, it would seem that both recruiters and employers were now approaching potential candidates through Twitter.
It took me awhile to assimilate the above; at first, I was quite stupefied. I then went on to Twitter and did a quick search, the results of which quickly turned my mild stupefaction into fiery annoyance.
The result was as follows:
About thirty law firms had advertised available positions through their Twitter accounts; positions which were NOT advertised on their websites.
Frankly, I wasn’t annoyed at the firms or at Twitter; I was annoyed at the various career workshops that I had gone to since I first came to England.
Why hadn’t anyone told me that Twitter was so important, I wonder…?
After all, they must have known about it, surely; it was their job to know, was it not?
To be honest, at first, I thought that the article referred to above was some sort of hoax but it really didn’t take me that long to find out that I was wrong to assume that.
All I had to do was a quick Google search on the importance of Twitter and the reasons behind employers and recruiters using it.
Here’s what I found to be the most concise of them all:
Quite simple, really; people used Twitter because it was FREE. Furthermore, it showed one’s ability to successfully entertwine one's professional with one's personal self by providing the world with a 140- character summary of one’s persona.
Last but not least, it showed employers that one was up-to-date with current trends and able to make good use of the power that is social media.
( see << http://myveryownhell.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/food-for-thought-power-of-social-media.html >>).
In the light of the above, then, it is high time we all started using Twitter to enhance our online presence and improve our employability.
That’s the harsh reality, whether you like it or not.
Follow me @Loki_LLB for more pointless chatter.
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