The Résumé Rider: Career GPS on Twitter

It’s safe to say that every motorcyclist has a smartphone (even us baby boomer bikers). It’s even safer to say that it would be hard to find a responsible rider who would use it for navigation while riding. More likely than not, you’d opt for a sophisticated GPS unit that not only makes navigation easy – while you focus on the road – but also offers added features and stays strong in all sorts of conditions. I have a personal preference for Garmin GPS since they continually improve their products to give you the best possible ride and you can switch devices between your car and your bike. Taking navigation devices to a new level, Garmin’s partnership with BMW has set the standard for top ride GPS devices creating a routing device plus personal digital assistant that can assist you in navigating a range of terrains and conditions.

A solid GPS system makes navigation easy and traveling to new places a fun adventure. There are a lot of product options to choose from and riders are well-served to do their pre-purchase homework and then learn how to use every feature to get the best ROI (ride on investment). The same goes for job searching. New job boards seem to appear on the online horizon continuously while certain ones continue to attract job seekers, like Indeed, Monster, Glassdoor, and loads of niche job sites. Besides LinkedIn, which has evolved and dominated as a cornerstone for professional networking, many job seekers overlook what other social media sites have to offer. Take Twitter, for example, which is establishing itself as a major recruiting resource.

Twitter hashtags, “#s,” followed by words, are used to organize content around a theme. They are common social media lingo, just as “LM” and “LMT” are used by navigation device manufacturers for “Lifetime Maps” and “Lifetime Maps and Traffic” which means you’ll get free lifetime updates for maps and traffic depending on the model of your device. A hashtags can be your job search GPS for navigating social media. For example, hiring managers on Twitter might use “#employment” in their tweet about a new job opening. Anyone who sees #employment” would then be able to scroll through those tweets.

Hiring managers have consistently moved away from conventional methods of advertising jobs and turned to social media to find qualified candidates. The little “#” can be a candidate’s best friend when it comes to:

Finding a job in today’s digital world (skim through the #s, click the link and apply)
Networking with recruiters and hiring managers (follow people and interact with them)
Finding career advice (Twitter chats are great for this).

Here are some hashtag navigators to GPS your job search journey: #JobSearch, #Jobhunt, #Hiring, #NowHiring, #Résumé, #Job or #Jobs, #Careers, #Employment, #HR or #HumanResources, #TweetMyJobs, #JobListing, #JobOpening

You can also enter keywords in Twitter search relevant to a position you’re interested in. For example, “hiring motorcycle mechanic” or “motorcycle mechanic jobs.” You can then pull the RSS feeds of the keywords you used and routinely check out online conversations happening about your searches. If something fits what you’re looking for, join the conversation on Twitter. Oftentimes, the job being talked about hasn’t even been posted so you’re coming into the conversation at an ideal time!

Ride safe and WRITE SAFE!