New user-friendly job guide is pretty sweet on tweets

By Joyce Lain Kennedy

Workplace Q&A | Tribune Media Services

DEAR JOYCE: Recently you mentioned Twitter. You weren’t negative, but neither were you overly enthusiastic about the new technology of tweeting for jobs. How about discussing the rest of the Twitter job story? – B.O.N.

The story of the Twitterverse as an essential new-style job search tool is still being written.

Twitter ups and downs

Visitor numbers for Twitter (twitter.com), which has been around since 2006, took off like a rocket last year when Oprah and other big names plugged it. Now Twitter’s Web traffic is leveling off. This word comes from Mashable (mashable.com) in an article interpreting statistics from Web analytics firms Compete and Quantcast.

But the reported slowing of Twitter Web traffic may really be a case of what one hand giveth, the other taketh way: Twitter says that despite its dip in Web traffic, its number of tweets is rising, fueled by surging use of smart phones and other mobile devices. In other words, the message seems to be that more people are tweeting on the go, while fewer are doing so sitting before computers in a fixed location.

Whatever the future holds for the microblogging site that lets you broadcast 140-character messages to anyone who chooses to become your “follower,” Twitter has become an important tactic in a strategy of using social media to hunt for jobs.

I think of Twitter as a new form of networking that permits you to call most of the shots. Like word-of-mouth marketing, Twitter gives you a hopscotching pathway to market your qualifications to hiring authorities. By tweeting, you put your search “out there.”

How does it work? Twitter operates on an opt-out basis. That is, you can follow and comment to virtually anyone you choose because Twitter users ordinarily do not block access. (They can block, but it’s rare.) By contrast, other social media sites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, function on an opt-in basis, requiring your friends and business associates to accept your effort to connect with them.

User-friendly guide

You asked for the rest of the Twitter job story: New words – and they are wildly enthusiastic – come from a trio of career industry leaders: Susan Britton Whitcomb, Chandlee Bryan and Deb Dib. Their clarifying words appear in a breakout new paperback, “The Twitter Job Search Guide: Find a Job and Advance Your Career in Just 15 Minutes a Day” (JIST; jist.com).

I don’t know about the 15-minutes-a-day part, but I do know that this is a book I wish I’d written – the how-to chapters are that good! Grab a peek at this exceptional guide’s content at twitterjobsearchguide.com.

Fighting job-hunt burnout

DEAR JOYCE: I’m wiped out on my job search, which I work every day. My energy is in the basement. I can’t seem to boost myself up to get past walls that keep me unemployed. – R.T.

Find a mental health professional to speak with. You could be in the grip of clinical depression. If a shrink is out of the question, contact your clergyman for on-the-ground guidance.

Here are past suggestions from readers who’ve tackled search burnout:

Sleep is one way to restore energy and enthusiasm. When famed medical missionary Albert Schweitzer was studying medicine, he slept little and sometimes forgot to eat. When the strain became intolerable and he couldn’t catch a wink of sleep, he would slip into a church and play Bach on the organ until weariness vanished.

Some depressed job seekers try to control stress damage through better nutrition. Some read or watch comedy. Others take a break to try out new interests and hobbies. Still others seek fun, joy and love with family and friends.

A timeless prescription for despair repair is a sense of realizing one’s purpose in life. Making a living is necessary, but making a difference is sanity-saving.

Have a question? Contact Joyce Lain Kennedy at Jobs Today, The Los Angeles Times, P.O. Box 60164, Los Angeles, CA 90060-0164 or e-mail jlk@ sunfeatures.com.