subject: Which One is Better (For the Job Search) Twitter Or LinkedIn? [print this page] Which One is Better (For the Job Search) Twitter Or LinkedIn?
These days everyone is all a twitter about Twitter or at least so it seems sometimes. LinkedIn is the steady-as-you-go burgeoning business tool that doesn't seem to ever be flashy and isn't too concerned about attention. LinkedIn has been build on competency. Twitter has been more "faddish" in its appeal.
The question at hand is: which is better for the job search?
My short answer is LinkedIn is better, and the largest portion of your time should be spent there.
However, I do not feel this is fair to Twitter because this sends a message suggesting an inherent inferiority. This isn't precisely the case. If you have a well-developed Twitter following, Twitter offers tremendously rapid capacity to reach a tremendously wide audience. Instantaneous communication can be pretty attractive when the communication is an opportunity or when you want to reach hiring managers quickly. With Twitter, you can follow recruiters, hiring managers, and others who could be helpful to your career. When they tweet about job leads, you'll be right there.
But when I say LinkedIn is better, it's because most job searches eventually require digging into skills, experience, cultural background, work ethic, education, and other points. Because of LinkedIn's well-developed professional profile area, contact management capacity, professional groups, and tools keeping members atuned to their network members' career changes, needs, plans, and development, it provides a great advantage that more often can approach the demands of a hiring decision. Because of this demand, Twitter will not normally carry the job search across the finish line, but particularly for more junior roles, Twitter can be a tremendous lead-generating tool.
In the end, perhaps the safer position is to understand that Twitter and LinkedIn both have a place in the professional world and choosing a winner isn't all that important.
