Applying For A Job At Facebook Is Like Three Months In Limbo

Can you turn your tweets into a real career?

By Randy Woods

A few weeks ago, I received a notice from Indeed.com about the the Top Job Trends of 2009, which listed the 10 fastest-growing employment sectors in the country. Normally, lists like this are predictable, and this was no different, with fairly obvious job sectors showing growth, such as education (38 percent), hospitality (20 percent) and retail (17 percent).

What stood out, however, was the "job opportunity" named at the top of the list, based on keyword search frequency: Twitter. Granted, everyone's favorite Internet trend was listed as a "micro-segment," so it can hardly be compared to something as established as, say, the legal profession. But I immediately wrinkled my brow thinking about how Twitter could be considered a job, in and of itself.

Now, I'm on the record for being not exactly thrilled about the 140-character medium. Far too much of the Twitscape has become an endless echo-chamber of re-tweets and pithy observations for it to hold my interest. Twitter is clearly a marketing force to be reckoned with, and all job-seekers would be wise to use it as much as possible to stay in touch with potential job leads, but calling it a profession (unless you're Ashton Kutcher) is a bit ludicrous.

I contacted Indeed.com to find out what they meant by adding Twitter to the top of their list. "As more and more businesses utilize Twitter, they will require employees who are familiar with or experts in the communication model," explained Hillary O'Keefe, a marketing associate with Indeed. One listing (now no longer on the site) sought someone to provide customer support responses via Twitter, she added.

Twitter isn't the only social media opportunity on the Indeed list. Other popular keywords include "Facebook" (#4), "Blogger" (#6) and, well, "Social Media" (#9). "In general, there is a trend with companies wanting to have greater branding through social networking and social media so the recent rise in job listings that include the keyword 'Twitter' is a reflection of that," O'Keefe said.

A more recent segment on ABC News by Tory Johnson touted the money-making potential of Twitter, using sites like SponsoredTweets.com. But after three months of being sponsored by advertisers with fees based on the numbers of followers, the best Johnson could show for her efforts was roughly $15 per tweet (far more than the average hosted per-tweet average of $1 or $2), which amounted to "more than $200." Hardly enough to pay the bills, I'd say.

So I put it to you, Hire Ground readers: Have you ever made serious money using Twitter? Or is merely a very good tool for broadening your network and spreading your brand? I invite you to share your experiences with me, either here, or, of course, on my Twitter account.

Writer and editor Randy Woods has filled out more job applications than he can count -- so you don't have to. Email him at hireground@nwjobs.com.

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How IBM Uses Social Media to Spur Employee Innovation

By Casey Hibbard

Published February 2, 2010

“Be yourself.” It’s one of the rules of social media. If you’re blogging, tweeting or Facebooking for business, be real—or you won’t be followed.

Yet, how do you pull off “authentic” while maintaining the company brand message?

It’s tough enough for a small business. What if you’re #2 on Business Week’s best global brands list, with nearly 400,000 employees across 170 countries?

At IBM, it’s about losing control.

“We don’t have a corporate blog or a corporate Twitter ID because we want the ‘IBMers’ in aggregate to be the corporate blog and the corporate Twitter ID,” says Adam Christensen, social media communications at IBM Corporation.

“We represent our brand online the way it always has been, which is employees first. Our brand is largely shaped by the interactions that they have with customers.”

Thousands of IBMers are the voice of the company. Such an approach might be surprising for #14 on the Fortune 500.

Organization: IBM

Social Media Stats:

• No IBM corporate blog or Twitter account
• 17,000 internal blogs
• 100,000 employees using internal blogs
• 53,000 members on SocialBlue (like Facebook for employees)
• A few thousand “IBMers” on Twitter
• Thousands of external bloggers,
• Almost 200,000 on LinkedIn
• As many as 500,000 participants in company crowd-sourcing “jams”
• 50,000 in alum networks on Facebook and LinkedIn

Results:

• Crowd-sourcing identified 10 best incubator businesses, which IBM funded with $100 million
• $100 billion in total revenue with a 44.1% gross profit margin in 2008

Edgy at 114

At 114 years old, IBM seems to be the Madonna of the corporate world, staying relevant from decade to decade. The first company to build a mainframe computer and help NASA land a man on the moon still holds more patents than any other U.S.-based technology company.

As it turns out, its decentralized social media approach is another milestone in the company’s history—driving unprecedented collaboration and innovation.

IBM lets employees talk—to each other and the public—without intervention. With a culture as diverse and distributed as IBM’s, getting employees to collaborate and share makes good business sense.

“We’re very much a knowledge-based company. It’s really the expertise of the employee that we’re hitting on,” Christensen says.

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