Do I have to be on Twitter?

If you wanna build your personal brand, establish an online presence, and be in the right place at the right time for your career opportunity search, then you’ve to utilize social media.  The big 3 social media sites are LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.  While LinkedIn is focused more fully on business, and Facebook leans toward the social, Twitter lands somewhere in the middle.  Nearly 75 million people visited Twitter in January 2010.

Twitter relies on “tweets,” which are posts of 140 characters or less.  They’re short, but frequent.  Life moves fast on Twitter.  But then, the world moves fast and this is a way to keep up.  And yep, while some tweets are huge time-wasters (some of us don’t wanna know what someone else had for breakfast), there’s quite a bit of useful information you can gain from following the right people.  It’s both a way to research and a way to network.  You can follow companies, customers, suppliers, vendors, industry experts, and recruiters who post positions (there’s even a Major 25 Recruiters on Twitter list–anyone who’s going to be useful for you.  You’ll be able to keep up-to-the minute current.  And then you can be useful yourself–pass along position leads,  industry info, or the great book you just read.  Any help or advice you can provide your contacts is a admirable way to contribute.

You can ask questions, find people, and make contacts.  Look for people to follow on www.twellow.com.  You can search medical device, lab, surgical, diagnostics, clinical, molecular…you get the drift.  You can search for any keywords that matter to you at search.twitter.com.

There are all kinds of ways to use Twitter for your position search.  More and more companies are getting involved, and 75 million people means you ought to be able to discover a position lead or 2.  You can put your elevator pitch in your bio, and provide links to your RESUME, LinkedIn page, or everything else that’s cool about you.  Check out my Top 10 Twitter Tips for Clinical and Laboratory Sales Reps for more tips on how to use Twitter for your job search.

The point is:  Twitter is a awesome networking tool.  And networking is critical to the success of your position search and your long-term career.

Set up your bio on Twitter today.  Need more help?  Check out Mashable.com’s Twitter Guide Book.

Article courtesy of  Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Headhunter at the nationally
recognized pharmaceutical and medical sales recruiting team of PHC Consulting.
© Copyright 2008 PHC Consulting | All rights reserved

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Do I have to be on Twitter?