Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion

Here’s my Q&A with Gary Zukowski, the founder of a new Twitter application called TweetMyJobs.com. Word of the application has already spread virally to attract its 4,000 plus members and 50,000 job postings.

What is TweetMyJobs?

It’s a service that connects employers and job seekers in real-time using the real-time text messaging service Twitter. Employers can immediately notify job seekers of any new openings, thereby speeding up the recruiting and hiring process. There is no cost to job seekers to use this service.

What was the genesis for TweetMyJOBS, and what kind of background do you come from?

I am a 21–year technology veteran of corporate America. I have worked as a developer, manager and consultant in IT organizations such as MITRE, GE and SeaLand, and has been following Twitter’s tremendous growth over the last couple years. Having read about Twitter assisting doctors in hospital operating rooms and even being a valuable communication tool during the Mumbai terrorist bombings, I realized that in this down economy there was a great opportunity for yet another creative use of Twitter.

I also owned an IT consulting firm, EasySoft Solutions, Inc., for the last 13 years, so the business of bringing job seekers and employers together is something I’m very fluent with.

How does the application work?

It is very easy. First, a person signs up for a free Twitter account or uses his or her existing Twitter account. Then, the person goes to TweetMyJOBS.com and signs up for our free service.

Once the account is established TweetMyJOBS job seekers subscribe to “job channels” for the cities and job types they have an interest. Instantly they can begin receiving text messages when positions become available on the job channels they have signed up for. In less than 4 minutes, a user can be getting new job postings on his or her cell phone. In addition, a job seeker can upload a resume and profile onto TweetMyJOBS, and we will tweet it for potential employers to find.

From an employer or sourcing approach, the process is very similar to many other boards. The difference is that the job posting is not only available on TweetMyJOBS for searching, but is sent out on a Job Channel on Twitter, which is then available for anyone on Twitter to see. We also use hashtags for each posting, which helps for searching. Employers can even re-tweet their job postings, which will refresh the listing on Twitter.

What has the response been so far?

Without any advertising, we already have over 4000 members, and close to 50,000 job postings. The jobs being posted on Twitter are getting view traffic, and we’ve even heard from a customer who actually found a job in an hour on TweetMyJOBS, after being unemployed for 6 months and exhausting all the traditional hiring avenues.

We’ve also gotten requests for international job channels, so we’ve turned on Canada, UK, Irelena, and India. We’ll keep expanding as the demand grows.

Why would a job seeker use TweetMyJOBS instead of other job posting services like Monster.com or Hotjobs?

As opposed to sites like Monster.com and Hotjobs where people can sign up to receive email notifications for jobs on a daily basis, TweetMyJOBS subscribers receive notification of a posting immediately. In this economy that could be the difference between getting a job or remaining unemployed. Also, we’re a lot more affordable. Our posting prices range from $.99 to $9.99 per job, depending on the duration, compared to $395 for a 30-day Monster posting.

Most sourcing specialists are very budget conscious today, which makes this type of package even more attractive.

There is a revolution going on in the employment marketplace moving more and more towards social media to source candidates, not only from a financial perspective, but from a quality perspective as well. Social networking sites such as Twitter makes it very easy to refer jobs openings to friends and collaborate about current employment opportunities. Why not integrate the function of job searching to their platforms of choice, rather than make them go to a separate site? This revolution should be putting companies like Monster and CareerBuilder on notice, because I see this trend continuing.

What are the plans for the future and what are the company’s long term goals?

Our immediate plan is to continue expanding the functionality of TweetMyJobs to further enhance the experience for job seekers and job posters.

Our goal is to become the number one social media job site in the world. We want to revolutionize the way employers and candidates connect the same way more traditional web based services transformed this process in the 1990’s. We are confident that based on the tremendous growth of Twitter, coupled with our proprietary software application, we are well positioned to be the market leader.

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