Spotlight Online for Career Services Professionals, March 3, 2010

Twitter Lists are new tools that could prove helpful both to college students searching for jobs and career services offices in their branding efforts. Chris Perry, founder of Career Rocketeer and Launchpad, explains that Twitter Lists are customizable groups of Twitter users that anyone can use to filter out contributions or “tweets” by industry, expertise, interest, or any other categorizing factor.

“Before Twitter Lists, users could either view the tweets of their entire networks all at once or view the tweets of one individual on his or her profile,” Perry explains. “This made it challenging and time-consuming to sort through the ever-flowing stream of tweets and keep those of friends, for instance, separated from those of professionals within an industry.”

Perry points out that this tool optimizes users’ activity on Twitter by allowing them to group users in their networks by anything they choose. For example, he says, users could have social lists, industry-specific lists, career search lists, and more.

“And even better,” Perry adds, “[users] can choose to make them public or private depending on how comfortable they are with sharing certain parts of their Twitter activity with others within their networks.”

Perry suggests career services professionals and the students they serve use www.Listorious.com and www.TweepML.org to search out other valuable lists from which they can potentially select tweeters to include on their own lists. Meanwhile, services like www.tweepsearch.com and www.twellow.com allow users to search tweeters by keywords as another way of identifying assets for their lists. If career services offices are setting up lists of job postings, Perry says they can use www.twitjobsearch.com to search for postings and see which tweeter posted them. Perry also recommends www.ListiMonkey.com, which allows users to get Google-style alerts on specific keywords in lists that they identify so not to miss any tweets on key topics.

Perry sees value in career services professionals encouraging their students to create their own lists and to become a resource on Twitter themselves in whatever industry or area of expertise they wish to establish a career.

“The more valuable a tweeter becomes, the more often he or she will be listed by others,” Perry says. “This builds the student’s brand and value to employers, and can help the student pursue opportunities as well.”

Perry recommends starting with some of the following resources:

• The Rocket List by Chris Perry @CareerRocketeer
• Great HR Recruiting Peeps by Mark Stelzner @Stelzner
• Job Search Experts by Susan Joyce @JobHuntOrg
• Career Experts by Rosa Vargas @ResumeService
• Career Workplace by Lindsey Pollak @LindseyPollak
• Personal Branding by Mohammed Al-Taee @MAltaee
• Career Coaches and Job Search by Jenny McClure @CincyRecruiter
• Job Postings by Cris Janzen @CrisJobCoach
• Top Job Bloggers by Jacob Share @JacobShare
• Career Resources by Brent Peterson @InterviewAngel

Perry suggests that career services offices can also identify and/or create for their students a number of different lists—such as lists for career search advice and tips, some with industry-specific news and trend information, and others for educational purposes. As Twitter Lists are relatively new, he says, even students who are active on Twitter may not be familiar with this feature.

“It is becoming increasingly essential for college career services to be present where their students are and find ways once they are there to keep up with, and ideally outpace, them,” Perry says.

“Identifying and creating Twitter Lists to share with student tweeters and, most importantly, spreading the word across campus to build awareness will help career services offices brand themselves as relevant places with up-to-date resources that students can turn to for assistance during their professional development and job-search efforts.”