Of the three major job boards, none has embraced Twitter so thoroughly as CareerBuilder. It’s using the short messaging service for everything from responding to customer inquiries to alerting followers to trends and CareerBuilder surveys.
Its latest Twitter product is customized job alerts, which allow Twitter users to get links and short messages to jobs meeting their search specifications. The newly launched beta version at TwitterJobAlerts is more customizable than the city- and industry-specific Twitter feeds CareerBuilder introduced last summer. Those deliver every job in an industry category. The Twitter Job Alerts deliver only the matching jobs.
“It’s our next step,” says communications manager Allison Nawoj. “This is something (jobseekers) can receive on the go.”
If it wasn’t for the peculiar limitation on when messages are delivered (choices are once a day or once a week) Twitter Job Alerts would have it all over the usual emailed job alerts . But once a day? That is so not Twittering.
“We’re still working out the kinks,” Nawoj stoically explains, adding that if user feedback warrants, “we may offer real time” alerts.
We have to believe it has something to do with a bandwidth issue or a potential bandwidth issue (Twitter may charge for corporate accounts), since Nawoj and her colleague, Michael Erwin, share duties on CareerBuilderPR and know that Twitter is all about the NOW.
Even with that hiccup, CareerBuilder is still light years ahead of HotJobs, and Monster. HotJobs has its senior managing editor Tweeting jobtips and commenting about articles published on the company website. Monster launched MonsterCareers, and its predecessor a year ago, but it seems to have fallen from grace; the last tweet was posted in July. The only other Monster accounts we spotted were from the company’s U.K. branch.
CareerBuilder, too, has its international reach. There are Twitter accounts for CareerBuilder in Germany, the U.K., India, Sweden, and elsewhere.
What really shows how far CareerBuilder has embraced Twitter is the company’s extensive primer on using Twitter. It explains even more clearly in some cases than does Twitter’s own help, how to use the site and what all those symbols mean. The new Twitter Job Alerts even has its own explanatory video.
Nawoj tells us the company has made a commitment to leveraging new technology to make job searching easier. “Twitter,” she says, “is just one extension of that.” The PR Twittering she does promotes the company’s brand, as do the customer care and CBSalary accounts. Combined, CareerBuilder’s Twitter accounts have more than 1,000 followers. Here’s the list of the other U.S. corporate sites.
What none of the job boards have, at least not yet, anyway, is a recruiter-oriented resume alert. Certainly recruiters using the major job boards can get emailed resume alerts that match searches they’ve set up. And today, with the labor shortage less keen than it was a year ago, that may be sufficient. But there are enough instances where a recruiter wants to know right now about new resumes that fit their needs.
Nawoj says that may be something for future development. The downside, of course, is that Twitter is an open, and public platform. So all messages are visible, and accessible.
What’s next in the short message world? How about Twitter resumes? BusinessWeek.com blogger Stephen Baker came up with the tongue-in-cheek idea last year, asking readers to submit 140 character resumes for themselves or celebrities. He called them resuwitters. We like Twittumes. Either way, don’t be surprised to see them popping up for real.