10 Twitter Don’ts for Job Seekers

A recurring theme in this blog involves finding work in the 21st century. Twitter is one of the largest platforms for social networking today, and as such, can dramatically impact your career. We’ll talk about things you should be doing as a job seeker in another list. For now, let’s cover some things you should not do on Twitter from a job seeker’s perspective. You might not be looking for work today, but almost all of us will some day.

Let’s start with Avatars.

1. I’d be embarassed if my mother saw this avatar in my Twitter profile. Props to SueIsSilly for getting to be among the Twitter elite, but I just cannot follow these. Never mind that my mother will probably never look at my Twitter profile… except she reads my blog. So I guess I better stick to this rule, and not ever follow SueIsSilly. If you’re looking for work in a corporate environment, you shouldn’t either.

[EDIT] Since I wrote this, I’ve realized that there is so much anarchy in Twitter that this “rule” doesn’t necessarily past the test. You simply cannot control what’s going on around you, and if you have more than a few dozen people on your Twitter account, the noise just drowns out any details unless you’re looking for them. Throwing a follow at Sue now… though I admit she made it easier by changing her avatar!

2. Refrain from using non-ASCII characters in your name. For many people, Twitter is an attention grabbing contest, and this leads to most of the mistakes people make with Twitter. I know people are looking for a way to stand out from the crowd, but really, if the name is Gus, just type Gus. If you say your name is ◊»›Gus‹«◊♣♥, some people will interpret these symbols as an inability to understand how to publish to the Web. Others will think you are screaming for attention. Neither is good for you.

3. You may want to show passion, but do not tell me you are an evangelist unless you really are working for the church. Whether it’s in your custom background image on Twitter, your Web site, or your tweets, when someone talks about being an evangelist, chances are they are just too enthusiastic about whatever they are trying to sell.

4. Back to Avatars. Just as bad as having an inappropriate avatar is not having one at all. When you see the o_O icon, it’s Twitter’s way of reminding you that the person you’re listening to is either more interested in talking than listening, or does not understand the technology they’re using. Either way, you are not projecting an interest in actually connecting with people.

5. It’s not just your avatar; your content needs to pass the test, too. I’m really not that sensitive, but what goes out into the Internet lives there forever. If our tweets are going to have association, I have a public persona that I am managing, and I cannot include your sexcepades in that persona. More than just watching what you tweet, as a job seeker you must be conscious of what the people you are following are tweeting.

6. Tweets are 140 characters for a reason. I recently passed on following someone who had somewhat interesting things to say, but usually needed 800 characters to do it. This resulted in six posts in a row on the same topic. Know your medium, and tweet accordingly. If you need more room, grab a blog and have at it. I like WordPress, but there are other platforms that work just as well and are just as free.

7. TwitterFeed. I’m not sure who invented this piece of software, but people are using it in very, very bad ways. The basic idea is that you can create tweets by automatically feeding blog titles through your Twitter account. It’s supposed to be used to tweet your own RSS feed, but there was one person I was following that had 217 posts in less than 24 hours when I decided to drop the follow. I don’t know how many RSS feeds he had crammed into TwitterFeed, but he was a random spouting of data all day long. Like other bad Twitter behavior, it is ego-centric and makes it seem as if your Twitter experience is all about you.

8. How you manage your aggression on Twitter speaks volume about your character. Over aggressive tweets are indicative of the type of team player or employee you will be. Even a spirited debate with your best friend in good fun can be misinterpreted later. Trash talk in person. Don’t make a recording.

9. Avoid using a Facebook or MySpace profile for your official Twitter profile. For job seekers, you need to keep this much more professional. A LinkedIn profile is much more appropriate.

10. Do not tweet about getting more followers. I don’t know how many followers I have, and I don’t really care. I’m not in a competition. Ashton Kutcher already won that, right? Again and again, I see people following me, and when I check out there first page or two of posts, they’re talking about getting to a thousand, ten thousand, or fifty thousand followers. Really – if you have that many followers, it’s a built in guarantee that you won’t be listening if I try to get your attention. Like so many things in life, quality trumps quantity.

Bonus rule: Keep an eye on who is following you. Plenty of people use Twitter to try to sell all kinds of thing. If “AdultVid10″ is following you, you need to use the block function!