Using Twitter for Job Search

Using Twitter for Job Search Using Twitter for Job Search If youre not using Twitter, youre not alone. Although the social networking site is growing at a rapid pace, it is still far smaller than giants like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace. And yet it may provide more opportunities for job binnenseekers than any of those sites.To understand why, you first need to understand how Twitter works.What is Twitter?Twitter is often called a micro-blogging site. Basically, it allows users to broadcast messages to the world as long as those messages are 140 characters or shorter. Your messages, known as tweets, are publicly available to anyone (heres my page) but with millions of people tweeting, the real benefit comes from the fact that you can choose who to listen to. In effect, you tune in to another persons Twitter feed and in doing so, you see everything they write.One of the things Ive learned about Twitter is that you cant explain the benefits to someone else in a way thats convincing. I can hear you now why would I want to be on a site where I can only deutsche bundespost a few words at a time?All I can say is that once you try it, youll start to see the benefits. I use it to keep up with news sites, to follow industry happenings and to understand job seeker concerns. Others use it to keep up with friends (I havent been able to sell any of my friends or family on using it yet) or for countless other reasons.But I want to talk about how you can use it for your job search.5 Secrets of Using Twitter to Find a Job1. Connect with RecruitersFirst and foremost, Twitter is a social networking site. Like LinkedIn or Facebook, it allows you to make connections with others. However, unlike those two sites, there is no requirement to know the people with whom you connect because on Twitter you dont ask someone to accept you as a connection, you simply hit the follow button and from that point on you see everything they write.And conversation is the lifeblood of Twitter, so yo u are perfectly free to reply to anything you read. This gives you endless opportunities to connect with recruiters and hiring managers in your target industry. It also allows you to listen and learn from the very people you want to attract attention from.To get started making connections, I recommend using either Twellow or Twitter Search to find people you would like to follow. By the way many of these people will follow you back, but some wont. It doesnt matter. You just need the ability to communicate with them.Now you can follow conversations and reply if you have something interesting to say. Even a thank you for this informative post message is welcome. We all like to know that other people are listening to our words of wisdom.2. Listen for OpportunitiesTwitter Search allows you to follow conversations that include keywords you choose. This is an excellent opportunity to passively surf for vacancies as many hiring managers will tweet about their openings.Simply go to Twitter Search, schrift in the key words (for example web design jobs or PR internships) and in the upper right hand corner you will see a button that says feed for this inquiry. Now you can subscribe to the RSS feed using this button and just check the feed a few times a day. Any time your keywords arise in conversation, youll see the tweet in your feedreader and you can instantly respond.I just had a perfect example of this myself when I tweeted that I was looking for a web designer. Several designers instantly responded even though none of them were followers of mine. One of them, David Harry shot me an email explaining that he was tracking Twitter for mentions of SEO and saw my post come up. Im not sure if we still need the help, but regardless, he and I are now following each other, Im writing this post and linking to his site, he plans to link back to me and Ive bookmarked his business site should I decide I need his help. Thats a connection that couldnt have been made without Twitte r.3. Use Twitter to tell people that you need a jobRecently Jonelle Marte wrote about this in the Wall Street Journal.Looking for a new job, Alexa Scordato didnt email or call her contacts about possible openings. Instead, she messaged them via the social-networking Web site Twitter.com.Her brief message Hey there Looking for a Social Media job up in Boston. Are you guys doing any entry level hires?Within a week, she had an interview. Within two weeks, she had a job.It must be said that this isnt the norm. You need a good network of followers and some luck for that to happen. But its certainly possible and especially if you have taken the time to research and follow the right people (many of whom will be folllowing you back, remember).For example, if youre seeking a position as a marketing manager for a technology company, and have followed recruiters who specialize in that industry, and hiring managers or employees who currently work at some of your target companies, theres every c hance that when you say Im looking for a marketing job in a tech company that someone will know of such a vacancy.This is why targeting people to follow is so important. Dont just add people as fast as you can so that your own number of followers increases instead focus on finding people who can help with your search.4. Be impressive add valueWhich brings me to my fourth point. No matter how well you do at attracting followers and making the right connections, no one will want to hire you if your tweets are all about what your kid just did, what youre making for dinner, or how you got smashed at a party last night and couldnt find your way home. Sure, its nice to see the personal side of people as well as the professional, but keep a balance and remember your goal. You want people to want to hire you and that means you need to be impressive and add value.So if youre a marketer, tweet about marketing. Share your ideas, link to your blog posts or blog posts written by other people. Offer tips and insights. In other words, establish yourself as knowledgeable so that when you do make contact with a recruiter, they are impressed with what they hear from you.If you absolutely must write things you wouldnt want an employer to see, set up a separate account that is private and can only be accessed by people you authorize (this is easily done in settings).5. Communicate well with Your Twitter PageTwitter allows you to write a brief bio describing yourself and to link to one external website. If you have a blog or a personal site, link there (provided the content is professional) If not, link to your LinkedIn profile, or set up a Visual CV. Its important to make sure that people who click on your link find good, solid information about you that will make them want to know more.This is so important. Every time someone follows me, I check out their page to see if I want to follow back. I look at their bio, I look at the content of their tweets and I often click on the l ink to see where it takes me. An unprofessional image at any of these points can be a real dampener on your job search prospects.In summaryI think Twitter is a wonderful opportunity to connect on a personal level with people you might not otherwise have a chance to reach. Of course, if its important that you keep your job search secret, Twitter wont be a good solution for you, so keep that in mind.unterstellung are my 5 tips, but if you have others, please let us know in the comments.

Erasmus Darwin Leavitt Jr

Erasmus Darwin Leavitt Jr Erasmus Darwin Leavitt Jr Erasmus Darwin Leavitt, Jr.Steam engine titan Erasmus Darwin Leavitt (1836 1916) made history for konzeptioning a series of economical, heavy-duty pumping engines for municipal water works and the mining industry. A founding member and past president of ASME, his body of work includes some of the largest engines of his day, revered for their less-is-mora design and game-changing operational efficiency.No mechanical engineer has left for our contemplation more impressive monuments of human skill than he, proclaimed the ASME Council on Leavitts death. Without special preliminary and technical instruction, the advantages of which nearly all engineers of the present day possess, he was able to work into the mysteries of the behavior of steam and the properties of materials.A native of Lowell, MA, Leavitt first learned to crack those mysteries during a three-year apprenticeship at the Lowell Machine Shop, followed by a one-year stint at the famous Corliss Nightingale steam engine works. By 1858, he was supervising the construction of high-end steam engines for maritime applications.At the outbreak of the Civil War, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and quickly moved into a position of engineering authority over the construction of ships. He remained with the Navy after the war, teaching steam engineering principles at the Naval Academy in Annapolis.He retired from the Navy and began private mechanical engineering practice in 1867.His breakthrough into big-time engineering was his design for a pumping engine at Lynn, MA. Working with George Normal of Newport, RI, he created an engine that incorporated his revolutionary ideas in engine efficiency. Next came a groundbreaking water works project for the city of Lawrence, MA, that paired two Lynn-style engines.These triumphs led to Leavitts long association with the Calumet Hecla Mining Company, where he served as consulting and mechanical engineer from 1874 to 1904. Here he made some of his landmark contributions in the design of heavy machinery for pumping and a range of other civic and industrial uses.The largest engine he built for the firm was aptly dubbed Superior. Designed around an inverted compound beam, its cylinders were 40 in. and 70 in. in diameter with a 6-ft stroke at 60 rpm. The firm used it to hoist drums and air compressors.The Leavitt-Riedler Pumping Engine.One of his signature projects, the 1894 Leavitt-Riedler Pumping Engine in Bostons Chestnut Hill High Service Pumping Station, is an ASME historic mechanical engineering landmark. Its regular operation speed of 50 rpm could pump 25 mio gallons of water in a day, attracting national attention as the most efficient pumping engine in the world, according to industry publications of the time. It has been idle since 1928, but is still on display at Bostons Metropolitan Waterworks Museum. It indelibly links Leavitts name to an era in history when the availability of clean, abundant mu nicipal water was considered a point of civic pride, and fast-growing cities built water works that doubled as grand public spaces.Leavitts other landmark projects included engines for a cable railway used on the Brooklyn Bridge, mining equipment for contractors in Venezuela, and numerous large water or sewage pumping engines for the cities of Louisville, Boston, Cambridge, and Bedford.Leavitt and his wife Elizabeth lived in Cambridge, MA, where they raised five children. He invested considerable personal energy in supporting nearby institutions such as the Harvard Trust Company, the local YMCA, and a board overseeing the construction of a major bridge project linking west Boston and Cambridge.In plus-rechnen to an honorary doctorate from Stevens Institute of Technology (its first), he was made an honorary member of ASME in 1915. The honor recognized not only his founding role in the organization but also his successful terms as president and vice president in its critical early yea rs.In ASMEs tribute to Leavitt, his peers applauded his common sense approach to design He did more than any other engineer in this country to establish sound principles and propriety of design. He appreciated the importance of directness and the absence of ornamentation in strictly utilitarian designs, and he firmly believed that beauty in machine design came from propriety.Michael McRae is an independent writer.No mechanical engineer has left for our contemplation more impressive monuments of human skill than he.1916 ASME Council Proclamation

MCCA Legal Diversity Career Fair

MCCA Legal Diversity Career FairDispatches from the Vault/MCCA Legal Diversity Career FairGreetings from the Marriott Marquis in Midtown Manhattan, where scads of jobseekers shuffle between recruiting booths atthe fourth annual Vault/MCCA Legal Diversity Career Fair. As the touristic throngs gawk at the twinkly lights of Times Square beyond, law school students, recent graduates and a substantial number of lateral candidates put in face time with recruiters from BigLaw, government and private corporations (the Target booth particularly resplendent in its ketchup hue). Recruiters have seen the crowd ebb and flow since the floor opened at 930 a.m., with the ever-hiring governmental agencies a popular choice in the morning and candidates stacking up for the private firms as the days progressed (at present 130 p.m. Nixon Peabody, Baker Botts, Fish Richardson and Moses Singer, among others, are keeping em waiting, whilethe DOJ seems to be the popular kid in the public sector). Anecdota l evidence suggests, logically, that mora 3Ls and laterals are turning out than in years past. Deborah Innocent (JD 08, Thomas M. Cooley Law School) is one such hopeful Innocent is preparing to jump back into the academic fray come fall, when shell start a two-year LLM night program at New York Law School shes looking for a full-time day gig to pay the bills. (In her words, shes somewhat unique in that shes kind of transitioning between being a student and a lateral.) Innocents decision to return to the classroom was made easier by the recession, she explained The economy is tough, she said. I have to do what I have to do to give myself an edge. Now decompressing in her native Queens after taking the New York and New Jersey bars last month, Innocent stopped by the fair with realistic expectations, hoping to make connections that might prove useful down theroad rather than banking on any immediate callback. Waiting to chat with a Fish Richardson rep, she mentioned that recruiters se emed to have their focus trained on law students entering their second year a/k/a the summer associate class of 2010. Odetta Cohen, a legal recruiting assistant for Kaye Scholer, confirmed that 2Ls are probably the primary target of her firm and its peers. No surprise there. But Cohen also pointed out that the turnout included a lot more 3Ls this year a lot of people who havent gotten offers, whereas in years past, they might have. In screening candidates for the firms 2010 summer class, Cohen estimated that only about half the attendees shed encountered had been 2Ls, with a full quarter ofthe unemployed massespresenting themselves as lateral prospects most of the latter, Cohen said, were second-and-third-year associates whod recently received walking papers. Visitors, havingendured a constant (albeit receding) stream of cataclysmic industry news over the past year, seemed to have steeled themselves for sobering updates from the private firms. Toward the end of a Nixon Peabody lin e thatstretched 12-deep around a corner of booths, Hofstra 3L Alexandra Cruz acknowledged that she knew it was gonna be brutal trying to find a job in tax or corporate law. Cruz, who said she was alsofocusingon Allen Overy and the FDIC as potential employers, is among the thousands of students who failed to secure a summer position this year, though she did spend three months interning for the Nassau (N.Y.) County property litigation team in the spring. Much more to come on Monday potential topics to include O.J., the homogeneity of BigLaw fashion, the rigors of military law boot camp, and, as always, pirates. - posted by ben fuchs