How TweetDeck can organize your Twitter job search

As much as I enjoy Twitter and find it useful for so many purposes, I realize I haven’t written about it often. This morning, logging into TweetDeck as I always do but with an unusual bout of writer’s block, I decided TweetDeck (and Twitter) actually make the perfect topic for today’s column.

Believe it or not, I was late to the game with Twitter, and extremely late with TweetDeck. Fellow tweeple didn’t understand how I could possibly use “only the Web interface” to interact with people. So, about two months ago, I finally made the big leap—the best Twitter-related decision I’ve ever made.

I hadn’t switched for so long because, frankly, the Web site intimidated me. It looked like a lot of work to set up, and I’m busy enough! But, I sat down one weekend and made a commitment that I wouldn’t walk away from my computer until I had everything just the way I wanted, which didn’t take long.

TweetDeck starts you off with columns containing everyone you follow and your “mentions.” You can then add other columns grouping those you follow together or based on search terms. And, these columns can be reordered in any way you wish.

Now that you understand the basics, here is what I recommend:

1. Search for hiring managers at your key organizations, as well as experts in your industry, and follow them. There are so many resources out there for this, including Twellow, Twitter Search, etc.

2. Create a group column of the hiring managers you follow. This will allow you to see their tweets separately from the column containing everyone you follow, allowing you to interact with them more promptly and efficiently.

3. Create a group column of experts in your field. It’s important to follow people whom you admire in your industry—not only for the information they provide but also for the networking contacts you might make. Again, keeping them in a separate column allows you to not miss a beat.

4. Create a search column of key industry hashtags. Using Hashtags.org, you can find hashtags relevant to your career choice. It’s important to pull these out separately from those you follow so you (a) can be up-to-date on the latest news in your field and (b) have plenty to retweet. Depending how often each hashtag is used, you might want to make several columns.

5. Create a search column of job-related hashtags. Again, there are hashtags for nearly everything out there, including internship and job advertisements. Because tweeting is free, more hiring managers are beginning to use Twitter as a first-stop for their position listings.

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