An Introduction to Twitter for the HR student

Twitter.

My class hears me talk about Twitter every week.  'You need to be on Twitter', 'Guess who I met today on Twitter', 'I learned about this new software vendor from Twitter'.

I am quite sure they have grasped some kind of notion that Twitter is relevant, interesting, maybe important, but they can't seem to grasp how it actually can be a valuable resource to the study and practice of HR. They also have likely concluded that I am a little obsessed with it.

So how to frame the discussion of Twitter in terms that students (90% of whom will have never heard of Twitter before class).

First things first - what the heck is Twitter anyway?

From Wikipedia -

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them.

OK, so you sign up for Twitter, post some status updates (140 characters or less), and decide which other Twitter user's updates you would like to see. Easy enough concept to grasp.  Everyone has sent text messages on their phones, (Twitter updates are more or less the same), and most students are on Facebook, so the idea of setting a 'status' that all your friends will see is also easily understood.

So what happens to most students when they sign up?

Well honestly, not a heck of a lot. They create an account, maybe post a quick update, possibly 'find' the person who convinced them to sign up and start following them, and then they wait for something interesting to start happening. And as you would expect, pretty much nothing interesting starts happening. The student fairly quickly loses interest, stops checking Twitter and posting updates, and concludes that the whole exercise was a waste of time.  Besides, everyone they are interested in connecting with are already their Facebook friends anyway.

So what should the student do?

Twitter, like every other social site, can be a really lonely place when you first arrive. You have no 'friends' no 'followers' and may not know exactly how to find anyone, much less the right people to 'follow'.  Unlike Facebook, the student's close and extended circle of friends and classmates are probably not on Twitter as yet, so making those initial connections can be a daunting proposition.

The key or essential component of deriving value from Twitter almost completely relies on finding the 'right' people to start following.  Once the student starts to make these connections, and then proceeds to extend them by following some of their first connection's followers, the value proposition starts to become more apparent. In fact most folks on Twitter will 'reverse-follow' you out of politeness even if they don't know you.

And in short order a student, (or anyone else for that matter), usually starts to contribute to the ongoing conversation, begins attracting followers or their own, and discovers even more interesting people to follow. Some say after about a month or 100 updates (Tweets), the student starts to 'get it'.  It becomes obvious the value of these conversations and connections, and many become firmly entrenched in the fabric of their Twitter community.

A Starting Point

So we have established the key to deriving value from Twitter is the forging of the initial set of connections to the 'right' people and organizations in your particular area of interest.  I am primarily concerned for my HR students and other HR practitioners.  Who should the HR student or practitioner consider 'following' once they join Twitter, (I know there are some other lists around on this topic, so I won't attempt to make an 'all-knowing' or 'all-encompassing' list, but rather a good starting point for the HR student).

The Instructor

Steve Boese - Me, if you are one of my students, you'd better follow me!

The Bloggers

Lisa Rosendahl - from the HR Manager blog

The HR Maven - from the HR Maven blog

lruettimann - from Punk Rock HR

sharlyn_lauby - from HR Bartender

hrwench - from the Hr Wench blog

Hr_Minion - from the HR Minion blog

jwilliamtincup - from the Human Capital Vendor space blog

kris_dunn - from the HR Capitalist blog

pdxmikek - from the Info Box blog

penelopetrunk - from Brazen Careerist

The Consultants

jasonaverbook - Jason Averbook, CEO of Knowledge Infusion

jcorsello - Jason Corsello, also from Knowledge Infusion and the Human Capitalist Blog

joningham - Jon Ingham of the Strategic HCM blog

The Vendors

Success Factors - Performance Management solutions

Salary.com - Compensation data and planning, recently expansding into Talent Management

Smart Recruiters - Recruiting solutions for small and medium size businesses

Human Capital Institute - great source of information and knowledge

Workscape - suite of Talent Management solutions

Sum Total Systems - learning management solutions

Standout Jobs - Really cool and innovative approach to recruiting solutions

Twitter Rockstars - these Twitterers have huge followings and post constantly

jowyang - Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester Research

chrisbrogan - Chris Brogan, Social Media Marketing thought leader

ross- Ross Mayfield, Chairman and co-founder of Socialtext

barackobama - I am pretty sure you know who he is

ev - Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter

For fun

SantaClaus25 - keep up with the big man's preparation for the big day

FakeMagnumPI - happenings with Magnum, Higgins and TC

Steven Colbert - from Comedy Central

NASA - goings on in space

Summary

The above list of Twitterers is not meant to be exhaustive, complete, or even exactly what the HR student is looking for.  But it is a start.  Sign up for Twitter and start following some of the folks on this list and see what you think.  Give it a chance.  It's said that it takes a while to determine how you can best leverage Twitter for your own purposes.  I can say unequivocally that Twitter helps me every single day, and sometimes, I hope I actually help some of my Twitter friends.

Please add any names of 'key' folks to follow to the comments, and happy Twittering!

Hi Santa

Hi Santa
Originally uploaded by steveboese

Time to make your HR Technology Christmas list?

This year I am asking Santa for the following:

1. More vendors willing to donate use of software for my HR Technology class, (thanks once more Halogen Software, SpectrumHR, and Standout Jobs).

2. More students, faculty, colleagues on Twitter, and seeing the value of this platform - follow me - Sbjet

3. Help to make this blog a better resource for students and others who care about HR and Technology.

4. Some more converts in the internal organization to 'modern' tools and technologies to facilitate collaboration, sharing, and connecting.

That is not too much to ask I think. 

And really, I made this post to test the automatic feed of the Santa pic from Flickr over to the blog.  Absolutely awesome functionality.

What is on your wish list for HR Technology?

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Recruiting and Twitter

 

A student asked me about how companies are using Twitter for recruiting. There are really several differennt aspects of using Twitter for recruiting that I see for the corporate or professional recruiter:

Communicating or Advertising your opening

1. Straight up adverts - Tweet something like 'Hi - we are looking for a Java developer - details here -  www.job.comp.com. This might be the least effective method, but it has an advantage of being quick, simple, and free. Realistically, the success of this approach depends in large part, to the maturity and size of your Twitter network, which I will expand upon in a follow up post.

2.Use TwitHire to generate your job posting tweet. TwitHire gives you a simple form where you fill in Job Title, company name and URL to the job, then posts the Tweet directly to Twitter from your Twitter account.  The nice thing about using TwitHire is the Tweets are readily identifiable as Job posts. Here is an example (click on the image to see it full size):

3. If your Corporate Job Site or other recruiting site (like Monster) can generate an RSS feed, you can use Twitterfeed to 'push' the new job postings via RSS directly to your Twitter account, or to a dedicated 'Company Jobs' Twitter account. Each time a new posting is made on the source site, a new Tweet will be sent with a link to the job advertisement.

Using your Network on Twitter

4.Simply Tweet - 'Hey, I am looking to hire a few great engineers, contact me if you are interested'.  Leveraging the folks who already follow you on Twitter can give you a great source of candidates. Again, the size and maturity of your network is key here.

Using Twitter Search

5. Twitter Search can be a useful way of uncovering potential candidates, or at a minimum contacts that you may be able to network with to build your Twitter reach.  Twitter search is just that, the ability to search the public steam of Tweets for words or phrases. Here is an example I found searching for the words 'job' and 'java' (click on the image to see it full size):

Twitter is fast becoming an important resource for recruiters, particularly ones recruiting in technical and graphical design fields. 

What are some other creative ways you can leverage Twitter in your recruiting?