You’re a senior and you don’t have a job. Yet. You spend all evening comb­ing job sites such as Tiger Tracks, hop­ing to find that oppor­tu­nity that speaks to you. You send in cover let­ter upon cover let­ter and resume after resume, all to your dis­may. No response.  Why not try some­thing new? As an early twenty-something, odds are you use social media on a daily basis. As a senior, you have prob­a­bly started to man­age your online pres­ence and rep­u­ta­tion. Why not use Twit­ter as a job search tool? Twit­ter is an online social net­work­ing and microblog­ging plat­form that job seek­ers can use to con­nect with and fol­low other pro­fes­sion­als, recruiters, hir­ing man­agers, and lead­ers in their indus­try or field. Check out these awe­some tips on how you can use Twit­ter to spice up and expand your job search.

1. Cre­ate a pro­fes­sional pro­file. You want to dis­tin­guish between your pub­lic Twit­ter and your pro­fes­sional Twit­ter. You don’t want the con­ver­sa­tions you have with your friends about unpro­fes­sional things avail­able to poten­tial employ­ers. Save your­self the has­sle. Make a pro­fes­sion­ally– focused Twit­ter account.
2. Make sure your Twit­ter name is pro­fes­sional. You can use your full name or a com­bi­na­tion of name and pro­fes­sion. For exam­ple, my twit­ter han­dle might be @RanatheMarketer.
3. Make sure your pro­file pic­ture reflects your pro­fes­sion­al­ism. For exam­ple, I might have a pic­ture of me in an office set­ting. A pro­fes­sional head­shot could also work. Just make sure the image you select denotes the image you want to present to peo­ple look­ing at your profile.
4. Make sure your pro­file infor­ma­tion includes the top skills you can offer. You also want to include the type of oppor­tu­nity you are look­ing for. If pos­si­ble, add links to your pro­fes­sional web­site and/or Linkedin.  You can also link to other pro­files or hash­tags that reflect your skills.
5. Tweet links to inter­est­ing arti­cles about your field or pro­fes­sional. Recruiters may be search­ing the site to see who is talk­ing about what. Also, use this plat­form to broad­cast sam­ples of your work or any other infor­ma­tion that reflects your inter­est. For exam­ple, I may share an arti­cle I found about how to mar­ket com­pany Face­book pro­files. Some­one who fol­lows me may be inter­ested and grate­ful for the share.
6. Fol­low the lead­ers in your indus­try. Use the Twit­ter “search” and “find peo­ple” tools to look up peo­ple within your industry’s net­work. I may search “mar­ket­ing man­agers in the NYC area” and see what comes up. Or, if you find an inter­est­ing arti­cle, you may directly tweet this to one of them. Who knows? This per­son may tweet you back, acknowl­edg­ing your tweet. This is great way to net­work online! Also, don’t be afraid to retweet what some­one else has shared. RETWEET, RETWEET, RETWEET.
7. Fol­low orga­ni­za­tions, com­pa­nies, and lists that are in your area of inter­est. Look for inter­est­ing tweetchats or twee­t­ups to join. Tweetchats are pre-arranged chats that hap­pen on Twit­ter through tweets that include a pre­de­fined hash­tag to link tweets in the form of a vir­tual conversation.
8. Search and fol­low hash­tags in your indus­try to stay cur­rent. One of the most impor­tant things you want to do is stay up to date on the indus­try buzz. Know­ing what’s hot in your indus­try will be invalu­able when reach­ing out to recruiters online. Hash­tags can also be used to find jobs. For exam­ples, employ­ers recruit­ing Prince­ton stu­dents on Twit­ter are encour­aged to use the tag #hiretigers when shar­ing con­tent. Make sure that #hiretigers is one of your saved searches so you can receive updates when some­one out there in the Twit­ter world is look­ing for a tiger to hire!

I hope you find these tips use­ful. Want more advice? Click here to see a list of the top 25 Twit­ter accounts you should be fol­low­ing as a job seeker!