Twitter

Mirandola

@Arkady,

If you're going for anything public or third sector you might have to go through competency based applications. If you haven't dealt with them before, happy to talk about them.

Arkady

Aren't you all lovely people. Thanks, I may well be in touch with you both in the next week or so. I went through the civil service fast stream assessment a few years back and got through to the final round, so I have some experience of the hideousness of competency testing. The public sector is not the most obvious of employers right now though.

Ali

Part 2. Linkedin I have been on this since nearly the start and use it to check on people as it especially if it is an interview or I am meeting some semi important for the first. It can help to be aware of common ground that might help at an interview etc. I also check it for candidates as well as quite often the CV doesn’t line up with what is in Linkedin so presents the opportunity to ask a difficult question to see how the reaction is handled. It can tell you who is looking at you ie I can see how many people are looking at my details either directly of through search. So I know in the last 60 days I know the total and that 49% came from recruitment agencies, 21% from Business Development and 16% from Consulting. That is without me doing any kind of promo as I am in work at the moment. On Line job sites I believe work through key word searches so you need to have plenty of them in your CV. Find some jobs that you would be interested in and get the words from them and add them to you CV that you will upload to the sites. Register for the job e-mails and alerts which again are based on key words so get more than one going with each site and see what you get and then fine tune. I am not sure which job sites are good for what you looking to do but I use such ones a jobsite etc. They are making their money from the Agencies and employers who pay to search the database. One thing to be aware of it that they also get alert e-mails just like you do so you will probably find initial interest as your perceived as being new and have turned up on one of the alerts. If it starts to dry up say after a few weeks change your CV a bit with some other keys words and you will get picked up by the alerts and will get more calls. Be aware that an a lot of JDs are really poorly written and a lot of the time the employees are not really sure what they want so apply even if it close do not just go for the close direct hits. It is a numbers game when I used work as an employment consultant in the olden day’s last century the numbers used to work out that you had 15 people as possible, 7 might get interviewed, one would get the job. So you have to work hard at it and keep cheery about if it goes slow sometimes. Finally get the picture of you mooning off of FB as people do look to check you out ! Good luck !

Arkady

Brilliant stuff Ali, thanks. What if my arse is prettier than my face?

Ali

Shave one of your beards !

krappyrubsnif

I use Tweetdeck.

Can someone tell me if you can send a private message to someone by Twitter? I have tried sending messages, but I get the impression that your message can be read by anyone searching Twitter for that persons name or looking at their @ thingy. My messages certainly show up on Tweetdeck so it looks like anyone can read them.

Also, can I use Twitter to try and reach specialist type people and ask a question or canvass opinion, and expect to get replies?

A week ago I tweeted asking for definitions of 'investigative journalism' using all kinds of hashtags like #investigativejournalism and #journalism etc but I didn't get a single reply. I got the impression nobody was reading it. So where did I go wrong? I did the same thing on Facebook and I got about 25 replies, (but they were all from people I knew). By comparison Twitter was a complete dud.

harpistic

You can send a Direct Message to anyone who follows you; you can either start the tweet with "d username [message]" or use the DM facility of the app. (Note - do NOT put @ before their name in a DM).

Re answers - remember that Twitter is realtime, so it all depends on who's reading tweets at any time - so it could be that you tweeted at a quiet time, or when people were distracted with other stuff. By all means tweet people with questions, but if they don't follow you, it's not guaranteed that they'll reply.

I have the opposite experience, but it's all about who your audience is.....

krappyrubsnif

Ah. So no way to use Twitter as a means of contacting someone unless they are following you? That's a pain. I need to contact an old colleague, but don't have their current email address or a phone number......the advice from a third party to 'get him through Twitter' doesn't sound as if it will work, then.

It looks like it's back to traditional methods - pick up the phone and start calling around......

harpistic

Oops sorry, I didn't mean to be discouraging! If people use apps (eg Tweetdeck etc) then they get notifications of any tweets sent to them - if they just use the website, they have to manually check and often miss a lot of tweets that way. And it's good practice to reply to people who you don't follow (I have some great conversations with them), but sometimes the tweets can be a bit spammy, eg "Please RT this" or "[spam]".

You can certainly try tweeting him, but there's a chance he/she won't reply... can you tell from his/her timeline how much he/she interacts with others, not necessarily people he/she follows?

andy

On LinkedIn, find companies you like, then see who in your network knows people there, then get them to intro you.

Arkady

Tosscat your beard is MASSIVE Did you join the Amish? Also, I admire the pleasing juxtaposition between your second and third most-visited categories on Foursquare.

emine

Sorry to be so dull, but can any Twitter expert explain if there is a way to put all the people who piss you off into a list so they don't appear in your timeline? Basically as if you've unfollowed them without actually unfollowing them. I've been using Tweetdeck and I see it's possible to filter out people by manually typing in their name, but this is a pain (and I'm not sure if it's possible to put in more than one person??). I thought by creating a private list, they would be moved out of the main feedy bit thing but it turns out this isn't right. Which means I still hate Twitter.

harpistic

Why is unfollowing them not an option? If their tweets irritate you that much, then stop following them! It's not very logical to hate Twitter because it enables you to follow people who you dislike... ?!

emine

Ha ha, I know! But there are people I know in the real world who would genuinely be offended if I stopped following them (and would know about it), and others who are good to follow but just tweet so much stuff it's overwhelming and I'd rather they didn't appear all the time. If I was inventing a Twitter app, I'd include a feature where you could split the people you follow into separate lists, eg good people for Friday afternoon timewasting, boring but useful people, daily must reads etc. I suppose I could do this manually and then ignore the main feed.

emine

Goodness, I'm thick - I now realise this is exactly what andy and Four Eyes were suggesting above. I didn't really understand at the time because am a techo-idiot. Sorry. As you were.

harpistic

Yes, if you want to still appear to follow them, then you need to ignore your Twitter feed and only follow the lists. And you can indeed set up all the lists you like and follow as many of them as you like. I know quite a few people who use lists instead of their main feed.

For me, there' s some people who I should follow (my main account is a company account) but I don't actually want to read what they say, so they're filtered out on my desktop app.

I've unfollowed friends (and stopped one or two from following me) and they get over it, trust me! ;) - and actually the feedback might be good for them.

emine

Brill, thanks. Am now ignoring main twitter feed and have set up lists. Instead of making lists of people I dislike - which was the result of the default pessimist setting of my personality - the realisation that I should be setting up lists of people I like instead was a massive one. It is taking me ages to do, but will be worth it I think.

harpistic

Yeah, but I agree, totally worth it - especially if it means you can get more out of Twitter :)

One of my friends calls the list that she follows "Fab Follows"...

andy

there's something about i) a room full of colleagues who are obsessed with twitter who ii) are neurotic enough to worry - and to notice - whether you have unfollowed them and iii) the low hanging cloud of default pessimism that focusses on the hopelessness of ever fixing i) If it wasn't already easy enough to guess where you worked....

emine

@andy - so right! Especially iii). I suppose I'll just have to accept it. Reckon I'm going to get sacked unless I get a million followers by the end of the year anyway

gardener-joe

...

harpistic

Realistically, it's going to go to a) your followers; to a lesser extent, b) people who may follow you via lists c) people who check your account d) people who Google you. Predominantly a), though.

One advantage of that is for safety - eg if you're in a potentially dodgy place / situation, it's worth telling Twitter so that you can get real-time help in case anything goes wrong.

miss annie

If I was in a dodgy place (not that I would be) I'd call my friends, and the police for a dodgy situation. I absolutely wouldn't rely on someone possibly reading somethingout in the ether on twitter at the time that I needed help. What if the person you needed had not included you on their list of people to check on? One of the most shocking things I have read recently was about a teenager who committed suicide. she posted real time updates on Facebook and not one of her hundreds of facebook 'friends' replied or checked that she was ok.

sgc

Unfortunately, we've all been conditioned to believe that nobody who actually commits suicide ever says they're going to before hand, and that such things are just "attention seeking". Nobody seems to believe that if you make a cry for help you might, well, need help.

miss annie

Agreed. The point is that putting something out into the ether on twitter, facebook etc. is no guarantee that someone will help in a time of need, no matter how many friends or followers you have. It's real life pals that one counts on. I count my blessings that I have made a few of those through this forum.

harpistic

Face it, would you rather have someone extra who's got your back or not? I know which I'd go for.... And you can't always ask someone to stop attacking you just so you can phone a friend!

tosscat

@ arky - god doesn't really hate fags you know, he just doesn't exist

Arkady

@tosscat: *chortle*, yes that’s my take on it.

krappyrubsnif

<P>Right.  I am determined to finally get on top of Twitter.  A free pint in the Old Dairy, or a coffee at any of the wired up coffee bars, to whoever from the local Twitterati can spare half an hour to tell me what I need to know.  (Which is a tad more than the basics - several rather convoluted questions.)    Plus ten free tweets and a grateful Follower to the ends of the earth.</P> <P>Who's up for it?</P>

harpistic

Happy to! <br>