University of Manchester Careers Blog

Many people think twitter is just gossip or a platform for self promotion but did you know that it’s a great place to hear about jobs and insider information.

Most companies & organisations will have a Twitter account many of the bigger ones will have multiple accounts for different purposes, marketing, customer service and careers or jobs.

By following some relevant accounts you can get notifications of when jobs are advertised, tips on how to apply and gather market information to improve your knowledge of a sector – really useful for making a great application or at interview.

So …

Step 1. Have you got a Twitter account?

Remember as with any social media people will judge you on what they find there. So if you want to interact with companies it might be worth setting up a professional account separate from your private life. It’s fine to show some personality in your professional twitter account and have a bit of fun BUT just be aware people will look at who is following them or commenting about them.

Get started create your account https://twitter.com

Step 2: Build your account

You could start by following us  @manunicareers to get an idea of how it works and see who we follow.  Many University departments, schools and societies also have accounts have a look and see what they are saying.

Step 3: Network to create your own opportunities

Because Twitter is an open social network, you can use it to make new contacts with professionals in your chosen industry, which may open the door to work experience and jobs. Many students have had success using Twitter in this way.

Some suggestions for getting started:

• Find and follow professionals and organisations in your chosen career sector. Observe them and see what sorts of things they tweet about.
• You can also create lists of employers or people you are interested in and you don’t necessarily have to follow them. By organising your account into lists you can have all your recruiters for marketing  in one place and for consultancy in another.  Select one or the other to look at and voila a list of tweets just on that topic from your selected tweeters uncluttered by the rest of what’s going on in your account.
• Re-tweet interesting things and comment on the industry news. Try to sound like a “professional in development” in your tweets and you will gradually start to “get on the radar” of professionals in the sector.
• Gradually join in conversations with the professionals and organisations you’re following, pose relevant questions and add your thoughts. You could throw in a tweet along the lines of: “Interesting blog on the outlook for publishing sector, thanks! Do you envisage your org. will be needing grads with social media skills?” to try to steer the conversation towards job opportunities.
• If you have a LinkedIn profile or a (professional-ish) blog, link to that from your Twitter profile so that recruiters can “check you out” and get a more rounded view of you as a person and future professional. If your blog is relevant to your chosen career sector, you can feed your blog posts onto Twitter.

Suggestions:

There are some great accounts you can follow that are already getting the information you may be interested in. For example

•  https://twitter.com/JCPinManchester  This is the local jobcentre in Manchester they find out about loads of great local opportunities and part time jobs that you just wouldn’t see advertised normally.
• Most graduate job sites have a vacancies feed pick the one you like to use and follow them they will have a twitter icon on their website  http://www.careers.manchester.ac.uk/findjobs/graduatejobs/ 
• There are some great places for market intelligence like professional bodies or journals e.g. The journal / website marketing week promotes it’s articles via twitter but actually if you are interested in the sector they are talking about then you can get some really interesting insights  https://twitter.com/MarketingWeekEd
• Get updates on what’s going on in the student & graduate labour market – really useful to help you understand supply and demand shortage areas and trends. https://twitter.com/LuminateLMI
• Watch out for the quirky stuff. Sometimes you just find someone who is doing exactly what you need e.g. https://twitter.com/damngoodjobs a collation of vacancies for those who want to make a difference. It’s by no means an official list but maybe that’s what you want – so look around who is following who, where do tweets originate?

And finally the great thing about Twitter – it’s short, scan it quickly and either click a link to read more or move on. It is fast moving though, blink and you might miss something!