Is Twitter A Job Qualification #FAIL?

by Laurie Sullivan, Jul 22, 2009, 6:21 PM

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Looking for a job in online social marketing? It's not what you know. It's the number of Twitter followers, Facebook friends, and connections on other social network sites that matter, according to Nance Rosen.

Rosen, career coach extraordinaire and CEO of Pegasus Media World, a communications firm focusing on publishing, social media and seminars, told Online Media Daily that brands looking to hire marketing professionals want "influencers," "connectors" and "mavens" -- people that others turn to for information, news and trends.

Take, for example, the recent job ad from Best Buy looking for a senior manager for emerging media marketing. The post requested one year of active blogging experience and preferred job qualifications of a graduate degree and 250+ Twitter followers.

The job post created buzz, but the blog post by Best Buy's CMO Barry Judge announcing the effort to tap the community at bestbuyideax.com for qualifications generated thousands of hits and hundreds of comments.

More companies are asking for followers and friends, Rosen says, but even more want lots of experience in social media. "It's only a matter of seconds, minutes or hours before marketers look at what is a natural phenomenon like viral marketing and seek to institutionalize it," she says. "Once we see signs of brand loyalty and engagement, we try to create that artificially."

Although it's still unusual to find job descriptions asking for Twitter followers, job boards are filled with requests looking for applicants who know how to attract Twitter followers. Plugging in the keywords "Twitter followers" in the job board indeed.com only returns a couple of listings, but "Twitter" returns jobs ranging from developers to managing accounts and tweets.

CareerBuilder has about 270 job posts looking for Twitter experience. Monster has roughly 300, but it seems that job headhunters are using it to get job tips out to people first, Rosen notes.

Similar to PageRank and Quality Scores on Google, search engine marketers should understand the influence among community members that puts prospective job candidates at the top of the human resources employment list.

Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan wrote in a blog post that Google Analytics and other JavaScript-based tracking tools may undercount visits to Twitter. Sullivan ran recent tests to challenge the numbers, and it appears that Twitter sent 500% to 1600% more traffic than log files or hosted stat packages like Google Analytics might show, he writes. And while the post really analyzes the discrepancies in reporting, the underlying message says marketers could find more of a lift from Twitter than first believed.

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7 comments on "Is Twitter A Job Qualification #FAIL?".

1. Jonathan Hutter from Garrand
   

   commented on: July 23, 2009 at 8:55 a.m.

   By this definition any porn star (or other star) would qualify for the job. Get out in the real world people! Most of the free world does not engage in Twitter, or spend their lives social networking. If that's all you're doing, how do you find out what's next?

   On the other hand, if you have a creative mind, can intuit and anticipate how people think and will react (beyond your own focus - because you are not the world), and develop creative ways to relate a brand message without turning them off, feel free to send me your resume.

   Look me up at www.garrand.com

2. Kathy Sharpe from Resonate Networks
   

   commented on: July 23, 2009 at 10:25 a.m.

   Because having a blog means its well written? And having followers on Twitter means you know anything about analyzing problems. There would be more benefits to just hiring a porn star- see previous comment.

3. Michael Kremin from National TeleConsultants
   

   commented on: July 23, 2009 at 11:32 a.m.

   Let us not forget how many blogs and Twitter feeds are simply the product of an agency on behalf of a client.

   Regarding leveraging the social networker for their sphere of influence, I know many social networkers whose mantra is to simply friend absolutely everyone they cross paths withs, whether they know them or not. Is that how we measure influence in digital media?

   Sounds like there are a lot of misinformed professionals on the who, what, when, where, and how to use social media effectively.

4. Steve Chapman from Virtual Outdoor adventures
   

   commented on: July 23, 2009 at 12:13 p.m.

   An impressive Twitter profile can be easily faked. Just sign up for one of those "100's of new followers" services and post a couple of tweets a day....and you're done. Quantity of followers is no measure of how well a person is really connected. Quality counts.

   I find linkedin to be a better quality indication of a person's level of connection. Although that can be faked also, it is much more difficult.

5. Catherine Ventura from @catherinventura
   

   commented on: July 23, 2009 at 12:43 p.m.

   It doesn't matter how many followers a candidate has in their own networks if it is not the network a particular company wants or needs to reach. Being able to research, identify and build a network that is appropriate and valuable to a marketer is a critical skill and a much more important one than just being able to build sheer numbers. Familiarity with Twitter is important, but skill and judgement in identifying significant potential relationships and building them are much more so!

6. Christopher Glenn from TseTsee.com, LLC
   

   commented on: July 23, 2009 at 8:26 p.m.

   No surprise here. And many of these companies wonder why they post the sales results that have been posting recently in the retail category. Nothing! I repeat, nothing can replace experience and wisdom accumulated over a career.

7. John Grono from GAP Research
   

   commented on: August 14, 2009 at 2:58 a.m.

   It appears as though the lunatics have taken over the asylum. Under those criteria Ashton Kutcher is the most qualified job applicant on the planet! This just HAS to be a Punk'd doesn't it?

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