All right, all right, I just read a comment from a sourcing professional regarding Twitter and referring to it as a place only to post announcements. Granted I’m paraphrasing, but that was the gist. Just announcements? Seriously? Let me give you a hearty “OMG”! Are you kidding me?! I was just stunned and shaking my head.
This is a blog, so obviously I’m not going to go on a 100 page rant but let’s do my Twitter elevator 
speech, and I’m caffeinated and can channel a New York accent when I need – so get ready.
Twitter is Huge. Yeah, with a capital H. It is an amazing way to network with people throughout the world on a variety of topics. Sure, on Linkedin you can build your nice little profile and make it look like you’re not looking for a job when maybe you are and you can connect to a gazillion people – but when do you talk to them? Build any relationships? Maybe you learn more than you wanted – M. Homula of FOT now knows that I spent a couple of hours hunting for my old Pearl Jam cd’s (he may have inferred I’m a dinosaur!) after seeing K. Dunn post another photo of Eddie Vedder on his HR Capitalist blog. Definitely, it’s a site for exchanging information beyond just announcing what most fabulous thing you’ve recently accomplished or product you’re rolling out.
I have a wide array of people I follow, and there are some I really want to read – like Adam Ostrow – his posts are always filled with information that I can use, and it would take serious hours on my Reader to get through to the same info. Twitter is good for announcements, I’m just saying there is more to it. You can take advantage of this site and really make it as functional as you want it to be and build connections with people or merely gather information.
I follow all kinds of people on Twitter and learn a lot professionally and personally, and I’m sure they do as well. It’s this little corner of the net where you freely share info, and when most of us joined, we created mini-profiles – really mini – no resumes here. But you know what? There are job titles and links to home pages and places of employments. So my dear AIRS alumni, how are you going to process that info from a candidate sourcing perspective? Hello! We can XRay and FlipSearch the site to our hearts content. I actually had a recent example of running a search for a structural engineer, found a great candidate on an anonymous blog – but I PeerSearched his username – which he also uses on Twitter and got the candidate’s real name and a link to his current employer, which gave me more people just like him! Boo Ya!
And friends, I hear your critique that you’ve been on Twitter and all you’ve heard is tweets on what people are eating. Hmmm, how to say this…you can choose who you follow as you can choose who follows you. If you don’t want to view someone’s daily chug-a-lug of yucky fermented tea….don’t! You can edit your follow list anytime and should. It’s your time, make the most of it.
Next time I need a rant, let me go back to how some professional dissed Second Life…..but until then, follow me and I’ll follow you…..find me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/sourcerkelly.
Kelly is the Recruitment Manager for Westat, a leading social science research organization headquartered in Rockville, Maryland.