The Twesume? Yes, you’re all probably wondering what that is. Well, after my 3 month internship, I’m back on the career hunt. Let’s be honest, it is a soul-destroying experience. It’s stressful (who in the world enjoys interviews?), time-consuming (kiss goodbye to the…er…glorious…British summer), and can be a huge blow to your self esteem (rejection is bad for the soul). But fear not readers, as there is a far more exciting way of securing that all important job/career break.

Now as many of you may know, I am a Twitter fiend. Any chance I get, I will tweet what is on my mind. My tweeting is apparently so good that one of my best friends even said that I never put out a bad tweet, which is high praise indeed! In this social-media driven age, what we say on the various social platforms that are at our disposal, can and does have an impact. A staggering 41% of employers/recruiters check social media platforms for information about their potential recruits and employees. So be careful about what you tweet. There are of course, varying degrees of the privacy across all the social media platforms, so that your potential profanities or ridiculously ludicrous drunken photos only be seen by your friends. Nonetheless, you should try – try being the operative word – to refrain from using social media platforms for commenting on those boring reality tv shows, which will remain nameless.

Twitter is the ultimate professional networking tool, and in my opinion, a far more effective job-search tool than LinkedIn. That particular platform, is one which I will never understand. Anyhow,  Twitter can be used to search and apply for jobs. Yes, that all important search tool lists thousands of different jobs, pretty much everyday. Not only that, some employers, especially if you’re in the PR, social, digital and creative media worlds that I tend to reside in, will post their latest vacancies via Twitter only. If you respond to the job advertised, make sure that your Twitter bio does not say something inane like “O is key” or “I love brain-farts” (those are real bios by the way).

Remember, you’re a professional, in my case a professional journalist. Above, is my bio with all key information included. Not once does it state any useless, or inane information. This is what I like to call a Twesume. Your entire professional career summed up in 160 characters. Now some of you may use Twitter as a personal networking tool. For those that do, I tell you this: USE FACEBOOK.

Aside from Twitter, there are other tools that can be used effectively when job-hunting. One particular favourite of mine is Vizify. It’s difficult to describe what it does but suffice to say, it builds a graphical bio for you through the information that you have stored on the various social media platforms that you use. The main three sources are Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn but you can integrate more social networking tools provided you use them, such as Tumblr, Four Square, Instagram and Pinterest. Once completed, you can have your own visual resume to help you stand out from the crowd. Needless to say, blogs are an effective tool too. It’s a portfolio of your work after all. If you’re not using blogging platforms such as Word Press or Tumblr, then start using them now.

So how effective are these particular tools? Well let’s just say I landed my internship through the effective use of Twitter, and I’m sure – as I’ve already found out – that there’ll be plenty more opportunities that will be landing at my…er…fingertips. So go on. Start making social media work for you, so that you can slowly inch your way out of job-hunting hell.