The Undercover Recruiter

Top 7 Ways to Kick Off Your Twitter Job Search

I love Twitter and not because I’m an exhibitionist with a short attention span. I love Twitter because it’s an amazing social search engine. I follow people in HR, employers, recruitment consultants, my clients, people who follow me, and lots of other people who just keep me amused. People are always tweeting interesting information, with links back to blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn and the like. They tell me and the rest of the universe what they like, who they talk to and what they’re up to. Well, the bits they’d like me to know at least. So I use Twitter a lot for ideas and contacts. But there are lots of other uses for Twitter as well, including finding a job on it.

If you are struggling to find a job, or even just randomly looking, you’d be mad if you overlook Twitter, even if you can’t stand the thought of exposing yourself on social media. You don’t actually have to expose yourself, to get interesting information out of it, or even a job. You can just use it as a research tool. Here are a few basic tips and things to think about to get you started.

Top Twitter Job Hunting Tip # 1

Sign on.

You can use your own name if you are open about your job search and happy for people to know. If not use something else.

If you want to use your own name but it’s taken, you could also use a name that represents what you do, your industry or what you’d like to do.

If you don’t want people to know that you are looking for a job, use another name, and set up and use an email address that doesn’t have your name in it.

Top Twitter Job Hunting Tip # 2

Fill in your professional bio. You are only given 160 characters so you’ll need to be precise. Have a look at what I’ve done with mine. I use a mixture of the professional and the personal. You don’t need to write your bio this way, but for me it’s a nice point of connection for anyone who chooses to talk to me.

Bio: Careers journalist, job search and interview coach, resume writer, author, random tweeter and SEO online profile tweaker. Prefers salt to chlorine on hot days.

Top Twitter Job Hunting Tip # 3

Link your URL back to your LinkedIn profile, website or blog if you have one. Make it easy for people to find out more about the information you’d like to present publicly about yourself.

Top Twitter Job Hunting Tip # 4

Learn how it works. Unlike LinkedIn, linking up on Twitter is not so personal. You can choose to follow whomever you like. Sometimes people follow you back. Sometimes they don’t. Don’t take it personally they don’t. It’s easy to be swamped by too many people.

Top Twitter Job Hunting Tip # 5

Don’t panic.

With “@”, “#”, “RT” and “FF” just to name a few, a Twitter conversation can seem like a jargon convention for the hyperactive, where you’re left on the sidelines. Here are a few quick translations.

- @ is a message you can post on your profile in acknowldgement to someone else, or when you are having a public conversation.

- # helps tweeters organise their tweets so other people can find them. Sometimes groups of people use this to have a conversation. I plan to join #blogchat at some time, for tips on blogging.

- “RT” allows you to tweet out someone else’s tweet, that you may think is useful

- “FF” is a random twitter code – Follow Friday. It’s a way of acknowledging people who you like, or who have helped you.

There are hundreds more than what I have just mentioned. That’s the thing with Twitter, cracking the code can get you hooked into it.

Top Twitter Job Hunting Tip # 6

What to tweet?

If you want people to follow you as well, you’ll need to say something. Otherwise you’ll look like a spammer. If you tweet about work, be careful though about whether your employer has any privacy policies. Some are explicit about who can be public spokes people for companies and Twitter can be in the public domain. Even if your employer doesn’t have privacy policies, you saying something about your work may simply not be acceptable. Plus it could be sackable.

There are also dumb things people have done on Twitter, to get them dismissed.

Have a read of this post by resume bear. It includes things such as:

Bragging about fooling your boss into thinking you worked late the night before.

Bragging about using twitter in work time when it’s not allowed.

Talking about when they will resign

I’ll be adding on to this list on this blog as time goes on.

If you post links you can use URL shortening services like bit.ly

When you tweet, do remember that Twitter is public and becomes part of the public record. Recruiters look at what in the public domain about you. Digital screening is becoming more and more popular. So a good rule of thumb is to remember everything on the internet can be archived. At some point it may come back to bite you.

Top Twitter Job Hunting Tip # 7

You don’t have to use Twitter publicly to use it to job search. You can set up a profile, protect your tweets, or not even tweet, and follow anyone you like for information.

I’ve found Twitter works for me when I engage in a conversation with another tweeter, but anything that I want to discuss privately, that I think could be confidential for the other person or myself, I say offline. It’s a good rule of thumb.

Who should you follow on Twitter to help you get a job?

You’ll be surprised who you find here. Many job boards, recruitment consultants, major employers and HR managers are on Twitter. You may sign up to a job board and receive an email once a day or once a week, however job boards will often blast out jobs on Twitter as they have them listed. This means you get first jump on jobs before other people do.

Use Twitter to network to find a job

Like LinkedIn you can follow colleagues, friends and people in your broader network. It’s a way of keeping what they’re up to in the present for you. Again remember if you follow them, they can click on your profile and see your tweets. So do be mindful of what you are sharing. If you want to make contact, Twitter makes it easy to pick up a thread of a conversation and have a point in common.

I’ve also known people who’ve needed staff really quickly to tweet out the job to their network. Those jobs have never landed on a job board.

Final thoughts

The bottom line with Twitter is that it’s only one job searching tool of many. More and more recruiters and employers are using these to track you down, or check you out, so it’s worthwhile at least understanding these, even if you choose not to use them.

There are more advanced Twitter tools job search tools that you can use. However if you’re like most people I know, you’ve barely thought about LinkedIn, let alone Twitter at this stage. So I’ll introduce these gently.

photo by: petesimon

Karalyn Brown

Karalyn Brown is a resume, interview and job search consultant based in Australia. She’s also an online careers agony aunty, writes frequently on career issues for a major Australian newspaper and talks job search tactics on the national broadcaster. You can visit her blog InterviewIQ or follow her on Twitter @InterviewIQ.

Filed Under: Job Search, Twitter Tagged With: How-To, Job Hunting, Twitter

Killer Social Recruiting Tips from @BillBoorman

Today I had a chat with the very insightful Bill Boorman, one of the most omnipresent personal brands you will ever see in the career industry. He has his fingers in many pies (#tru events, blogging, training, consulting, speaking to name but a few) and he shared some great wisdom for recruiters, job seekers and others in the career industry. This interview actually got so long that I’ve decided to post the 2nd part later – stay tuned for that!

What is your day job Bill?

I don’t really have a day job as such, more a series of over lapping projects. My time is divided in to 5 disciplines:

1: Training for Recruiters, Recruitment Managers and Agency Owners in all areas of business growth.
2: Consultancy to Recruitment Firms in all areas of operational practice particularly Performance Management.
3: Running and promoting tru events – The Recruiting Unconference globally
4: Assisting recruiting firms with implement social media strategy and practice
5: Key-note speaking and writing

What are the trends you are seeing in the industry?

The whole recruitment landscape is changing post recession. My main concern is that whilst recorded open vacancies are increasing month on month, and recruiters are reporting increased placement volume, the level of unemployment is still rising. This tells me that there is a distinct gap between the skills available among job seekers and the skills needed by employers. It is critical for job seekers to research the market and identify where the skills gaps are, and what skills they might have hidden in their past and promote these skills. It might also be a time to look at retraining as the best route to employment.

Other trends I have noticed are that job openings are taking twice as long to fill as 12 months ago. This is because hiring companies have introduced extra steps in to the hiring process, with more interviews and extra tests and checks. Companies that have just started re-hiring want to be 100% right, and this has made the process for job seekers quite arduous. In particular, more importance is being placed on the cultural fit between the candidate and the hiring company.

Job Seekers need to be patient in the process and not lose faith in opportunities. Keep following up until a post is definitely closed. Because of Job Seeker uncertainty, up to 50% of offers are now being declined. This means it’s worth following the job all the way, and if you get a decline notice, send a positive thanks note outlining why you would be interested in the joining the company and want to be considered in the future. This could just put you back in the frame when the opportunity comes up again; it is a lot easier for the hiring company than starting again.

Prepare for every interview in the process as if it is a first meeting. New interviewers want to see different things. Research every interviewer through social media and by running a google search on them. You need a new plan to emphasise your strengths and reinforce your interest and cultural fit at every stage. Employers want to know why you want THAT job and that COMPANY, not just that you want a job.

Spend extra time researching the culture of the company. Look up their vision and values. See what other people are saying about them via www.addict-o-matic.com and a Google search. Check who you might be connected to that works there by doing a Linked In search and talk to anyone you know there. (Branch Out on Facebook does the same thing.) Prepare questions for the interview that demonstrate that you have done your research. Always ask questions about things the interviewer has not told you.

Tell us about #tru

Tru is a series of recruiting unconferences for Recruiters, HR, Technologists, Job boards and others with an interest in talent. An unconference is unlike a conference in that there is no PowerPoint, presentations or talking heads. Subjects are split in to tracks with 2 – 3 track leaders who start the conversation. It is a lot like live social-media. Events are also low cost at £100 for 2 days, and have a massive networking element.

What’s your take on social media and recruitment?

Social media in recruitment or more specifically Social Recruiting is starting to grow up. Some companies, like #truManchester track leaders SodexoUSA have been at it for a few years. In the past, much of the talk has been about theory and how things could work. There is much more material about now as to what has worked and failed with these businesses.

About a third of the internet users are active in social media channels. That means that Recruitment Firms, Corporate Recruiters and Job Seekers need strategies that blend in social rather than being purely social.

The key elements that social media brings to recruitment is targeted reach, engagement opportunity, identification of targets and keeping personal, corporate and employer brand in the shop window.

Over the next 12 months mobile and video will feature much higher in the social mix, and will need to form a big part of strategy. I also see the channels moving closer together in how they link up. In the UK, Facebook will continue to grow as a recruiting and business channel. For Job Seekers, make sure you have completed your career details on your FB profile. This makes you much easier to find via this channel. Fan pages and FB ads will equally increase in use and results.

LinkedIn will remain as the main channel for most recruiters, corporate or third party. This means that it is now more important than ever that you have a decent profile rich with key-words to feature in a search. LinkedIn will develop more social applications and link closer to twitter and Facebook. With more use of the box.net application for embedding documents, video and slideshare, I see Linked In becoming much more of a reference site for individuals and companies with a lot more material other than purely career details. (The blog link and twitter follow applications already do this.) This channel will become much more than a post and pray platform, and smart recruiters and job seekers need to keep an eye on how the engagement options develop.

I use the twitter application to follow all of my Linked In connections that list twitter accounts automatically. This means recruiters or job seekers can find targets on Linked In and engage much quicker to make the right impression. I also expect the paid for Linked In services to develop some serious differentiators from the free service as it now operates, making them essential to serious job seekers and recruiters by early next year.

Recruiting on twitter will continue to develop around hashtags on common themes. Twitter chats like #jobhuntchat and #blogchat are becoming an increasingly popular ways for people with shared interests to find each other and share experiences and views. While not massive over this side of the water, I’m expecting these to start springing up in UK streams. This is a perfect place for recruiters and job seekers to start engaging. Applications like TwitterBlast also enable you to follow everyone using a hashtag at once. These common interest hashtags will replace the normal twitter stream by filtering through tweetdeck or other similar applications.

More monitoring, alerts and posting applications will be developed for twitter in particular as well as other channels. The job boards are becoming more social, both for brand awareness and communication. Direct Messaging and Facebook Messaging are becoming the preferred form of communicating, with on-line availability to respond to real time requests and questions becoming increasingly important. Applications like Gist, that enable monitoring of all channels, with alerts for messages will become essential in the recruiter/job seeker toolbox.

Job boards and corporate sites will increasingly post to all channels through the use of tools like Jobs2Web. Monitoring these streams for job seekers will require signing up for services like JobDeck from Twitter Job Search. With so much information floating about the social channels, Job Seekers and Recruiters will look increasingly to use applications that filter noise and deliver only what is needed or wanted. I expect Social Media use to be much more about keeping informed and up to date with the applications and there uses, than about the channels themselves. The last twitter developer’s conference had something like 3000 applications showcased. Recruiters and job seekers will need to identify trusted sources to keep them up to date with developments and find the best ones to suit their specific needs.

Ultimately though, I see the biggest change being the integration of social media and to social recruiting in to communication, recruiting, job seeking or branding/marketing strategy becoming a given part of the plan rather than a stand alone strategy. It will just become a part of how we do things, rather than an area for special attention.

You’re best sourcing tips for recruiters and head-hunters?

That is really dictated by what you are sourcing for, and what your strategy is. Whether you are applying a just in time sourcing strategy or looking to build a talent pool prior to requirement. Either way you are going to need a strong on-line presence yourself with plenty of connections.

I think we have a lot to learn in the UK on sourcing techniques from the U.S. where recruiting is much less data-base focussed and more built around the sourcing model. There are some great resources available to learn from. In particular, I would recommend signing up for the blogs from:

: Glen Cathey – The Boolean Black Belt
: Jim Stroud – The Recruiters Lounge – which includes some great “how to” video tips
: Ryan Leary – Recruiting Tools
: Irina Shameva – Boolean Strings

Closer to home (UK) you can follow:

: Katharine Robinson – The Sourceress
: Peter Gold – Hire Strategies
: Andy Headworth – Sirona Says
: Mark Williams – Mr.LinkedIn

I think that between this crowd, you can keep up with the latest news, thinking and developments in social recruiting. The channels, applications and the way they are being used are constantly evolving and changing. You need to keep involved and following other recruiters to keep up. Collaboration and sharing with other recruiters can be an unusual concept for lots of recruiters, but by stepping out of the silo you will continually learn. In my view, social learning has even more benefits than social recruiting.

My personal view is that recruiters need to stop thinking in terms of social-media channels like twitter, Facebook, Linked In or YouTube and think of all social media as a combined communications channel. Post links to all of your on-line places so that it easy to connect in all of the channels and use applications that track who is connected to you where. Each of the channels requires a different style of content and writing. People will get quickly bored of you if you cross post the same material and comments in all channels or do nothing other than post jobs on your accounts. Content and regular engagement is key to making social sourcing work.

Final words of wisdom?

“It’s been emotional!”

- Vinnie Jones in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

Bill Boorman has always worked in and around recruiting as a Recruiter, Trainer, Operations Director, Consultant and Coach. Over the last 5 years he has been working as a consultant and trainer to growing recruiting firms across Europe. The last 18 months saw his introduction to social media and social recruiting. He claims to now be best known as @BillBoorman on twitter, and have been described a twitterholic that never sleeps, omnipresent and even a whirling dervish!

Jorgen Sundberg

The original Undercover Recruiter, after 7 years in tech recruiting Jorgen now runs Link Humans, a social media marketing agency in London.

Filed Under: Expert Interview, Social Recruiting Tagged With: Recruiter

Top 5 Psychometric Tests for Your Career Success

psychometric testing in the workplace

To make a successful career change, you have to know what type of career is going to suit your personality. Psychometric tests are a quick, convenient way of “personality typing” — getting an idea of which specific personality group you fall into in terms of skill sets, ambitions and aspirations. Once you know which group you fall into, it’s easier to assess what type of career might be suited to you.

Personality psychometric tests are not to be confused with the psychometric tests employers use to test candidates’ ability. These are usually taken in exam-like conditions and involve numerical and verbal reasoning exercises that assess a candidate’s ability to do the job. Although personality psychometric tests such as OPQ32 are used by managers and businesses to evaluate an individual’s behavioural style, there are many online personality psychometric tests that you can take yourself, in your own time. Here are five of the most popular free tests doing the rounds at the moment (the headers are hyperlinks):

1. Jung Typology Test

According to the thinking behind this test, personality typing involves classifying the individual according to four criteria: extroversion/introversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, judging/perceiving. Different combinations of the criteria determine a type. For instance, if you are an Extrovert Intuition Feeling Judging, you are imaginatively called an EIFJ. According to which type you are, the test not only feeds back a list of suitable career options, but also some educational institutions that can give you the relevant skills training.

2. Career Psychometrics: ‘How to Land your Ideal Job’

You have 2 minutes 45 seconds to answer a short series of questions asking you to what extent you have certain personality traits. After you’ve completed it, you get a free Personality Report that explicitly tells you not only what type of job is for you, but also what type of job isn’t for you.

The only catch is you have to give them your email address to get the free report, and then they send you some spam for a few days.

3. Finding Potential: Individuals’ Personality Questionnaire

This test takes around 15 minutes to complete and gives you a 15 page report that shows you the personality traits you scored higher and lower on; gives you a detailed breakdown of these traits; and then matches work preferences and possible jobs to you according to whether you scored high or low on each particular trait.

4. SimilarMinds.com: ‘What Career Suits Me’?

This is slightly different in that, for some reason, it first asks you what your ‘current or desired’ career is before you take the test. It then gives you a list of statements and you have to indicate to what degree each statement is true of you. In the results it categorises you as a certain type of person such as an ‘Idealist’ and then gives you a list of possible professions. Of course, one of these professions is the one you put down as your ‘desired career’.

5. PersonalityType.com: ‘Discover Your Perfect Career’ Quiz

This uses the same criteria as the Jung Typology Test, except you yourself have to decide whether you are an extrovert or introvert, sensor or intuitive, etc. by reading bullet point descriptions of each pair of qualities and then picking which of the two qualities is most like you. After you’ve chosen from the four categories, the test identifies your personality type as the conventional Jung test does and then gives you a list of suitable careers.

Obviously none of us are going to choose our next career exclusively on the back of a traffic-coaxing online test, but they are useful tools for seeing if you’d really be suited for that career move that’s recently caught your imagination. And if you have no idea what you’d like to do, it’s a fun way of getting a few suggestions you might never have thought of by yourself.

Nisa Chitakasem is the founder of Position Ignition – a careers company dedicated to taking you to the next step in your career. Nisa is passionate about helping individuals find the right career path for them whether it involves finding a more rewarding career, making a career change, figuring out the right career plan or being creative about career directions.

photo by: Jerry Bunkers

Guest Blogger

This post is written by a guest blogger. If you are interested in submitting a guest post, check out our Guest Post Guidelines - we look forward to hearing from you!

Filed Under: Career Management, Interview Tips, Screening Tagged With: Career Advice

Cheat Sheet to Your Best Interview Answers

interview cheating

When preparing for your next job interview, you’ll want to have answers to these common job interview questions. These answers are just a guideline to follow. The most important thing to do is to be honest and be yourself when answering these job interview questions.

1. Tell me about yourself.

Perhaps this the most common and famous interview question of all interview question. “Tell me about yourself” is the gateway to just about anything to wish to say which is why it can be tricky. When asked the question, the interviewer doesn’t want to know where you were born or what color your hair it. This question prompts an answer that gives the interviewer a general answer of why you would be good for this job. Your answer may reveal some of your greatest achievements or how your past experience might relate to the job you are applying for.

2. Why would I hire you?

For this answer you need to realize that the better answer you give, the easier it is for the employer. It’s up to you so give the employer a reason to hire you. This is a great time to tell the interviewer about any past work experience you have. You might say, “When I was working at XXX, I did XXX. I feel that experience will allow me to excel at this position I am applying for.” Even better, think of a specific example or story to tell about a situation you have been in before and how that could be useful to the company.

3. What are you strengths

Figure out 2-3 things about yourself that you really like about yourself and elaborate. Always give an example after you say your strength. For example, you may say you are dedicated. Then you should follow up with an instance when at your last you job, you had an important project due and you worked extra hours to make sure it got done.

4. What are your weaknesses?

When answering this question, you always want to give an answer that isn’t really a weakness. You may say, “I don’t speak a second language,” or “when I start a project, I can’t focus on anything else until I get it done.” This shows that you are dedicated and hard working. You never want to truly bash yourself when answering this question. That isn’t the point. The following examples here are easy to discuss and can lead to talking about future growth and learning.

5. What is the most important thing to you in a job?

If there is something really important for you to have in a job, be honest and say it. Remember, a job interview is a tool to reveal the best fit for the company. If something is really important to you that the company doesn’t offer, it is best to reveal it now.

6. What are you career goals?

Employers want to know this to see what positions you might grow into later on if you were to be hired. They also want to know this to see how long you might stay with the company if hired. The company may be looking for a candidate they can groom into their next Senior VP. However, you are only looking for a job to cover you for the next couple of years, it might not be the best match.

7. Do you have any questions for me?

Do your research ahead of time and if you truly have a question, ask it. When you ask legitimate, relevant questions, you show the interviewer you put in time to research beforehand. However, don’t ever ask questions, just to ask questions or to look good. The interviewer will sense your lack of authenticity right away and that may hurt your chances. Make the time to think of an intelligent question about the job before hand. You may ask, “What is a typical day like for this position?” You can also ask, “What opportunity for advancement does this position have?”

8. Why did you leave your last job?

Whatever the reason was, tell the story of why is was mutually beneficial for you to leave the company. Never blurt out, “I got fired,” and end it at that. It makes you look bad and can even make the interviewer feel uncomfortable. Prepare an honest story with a logical reason that doesn’t reveal too much personal information or company gossip. If you did get fired, you can use this as an opportunity to discuss what you lessons you learned and what you would now do differently.

photo by: Ed Yourdon

Jorgen Sundberg

The original Undercover Recruiter, after 7 years in tech recruiting Jorgen now runs Link Humans, a social media marketing agency in London.

Filed Under: Interview Tips Tagged With: Interviewing