Five Free Tools for Recruiters Using Twitter

Hey, Recruiters.

Last week’s post, Top Three Concerns of Recruiters Using Twitter (Resolved) generated a lot of interest and conversation. If you’re still concerned about not being interesting enough to use Twitter, I think Andy Headworth can dissuade you. Read his post, Recruiter: Who will follow me on Twitter? I’m not that interesting.

In terms of other relevant concerns for recruiters using Twitter, there are useful (and free) tools that will save time and increase followers by finding people to follow. Here are five tools that I use on a regular basis:

Cotweet: Register your account (or multiple accounts) using Cotweet. This application enables you to schedule your tweets throughout the day and save searches on Twitter, such as #socialrecruiting or #engineerjobs.

Google Reader: Add your favorite blogs and save searches in one location using a Google Reader. Tweeting new blog posts & newsworthy information that pops up on your reader provokes discussion and will make you sound more interesting than you already are ;). Here's a one minute video and a detailed article on how to get started.

Bit.ly: Shorten your urls of job postings or relevant articles to save space. You can also track how many people clicked on the link and what source they came from. Hint: You can track the stats of any bit.ly link by just adding a "+" sign to the end.

Register your account in one of the bajillion Twitter directories. Some of the most notable: Mr. Tweet, Listorious, WeFollow. Peruse these directories for people you can follow too.

Tweepsearch: Allows you to search through bios and locations for keywords i.e. "registered nurse" or "Milwaukee, WI".

While thought-leaders are formulating strategic plans and discussing “the future” of social recruiting, many recruiters are still struggling with the logistics and strange vocabulary (Ali, someone twitted with me yesterday!) of Twitter. These tools will enable recruiters to actively participate & become more comfortable. Someday, these same recruiters will transform thought-leaders’ innovative & creative social recruiting ideas into case studies.

Questions on the tools listed above? Comment.
Have tools to add to the list? Comment.
Still think Twitter is a mystery and need concrete advice? Comment.

Originally posted on Recruitalicious

Comment by Mike Tedesco on July 18, 2010 at 4:21pm: One of the best tools I've come across is hootsuite.com. Allows you to schedule posts to your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc., etc., accounts. Integrate it into your ATS or simply broadcast your jobs manually. Takes a lot of the work out of making connections. Mike www.usajobblast.com