Job Hunting in 140 Characters

Chelsea Winkel needed a job. A recent Chicago transplant, the interaction designer wasn’t having much success. Advice from others mostly fell along the lines of, in her words: “I got my first job in Chicago through a recommendation of someone already working in Chicago.” After applying to yet another job and barely receiving a response, she decided to take her search public- and direct. Although she originally created a Twitter account (under the name hirechelsea) for social purposes, the transition from pleasure to business was an easy one. Within hours of Tweeting “Who do I have to schmooze to get a job in this joint?” she received three direct messages, a much better (and as it would turn out, more substantial) turnout than anything else she’d tried so far.

One of those messages was from Jeff Kenny, a veteran interaction designer for Duo. After attending the IDEA 2008 conference, Jeff noticed Jason Fried, founder of 37signals, thank another Twitter user for a write-up of the conference: Chelsea had also attended, but she and Jeff had not crossed paths. After reading her updates, jeffkenny and hirechelsea began chatting back and forth, and eventually “I started following her and ended up replying to one of her questions and then she started following me.” From her Twitter account Jeff found her website, and noticed she had worked for Pearson, for whom he’d done freelance work for in the past. After following each other for about a month and exchanging numerous Tweets, he saw she was looking for work. After a few direct Twitter messages, Jeff sent Chelsea’s resume to the head of Duo’s design department, and the rest is history. Interestingly enough, word may have spread: after Chelsea was hired, Jeff experienced a brief surge of followers.

Was Chelsea’s success a fluke, or does Twitter have applications beyond what its name would suggest? “Apparently, being less formal and little more public worked,” said Chelsea of her job-finding strategy. She credits the application’s almost innately informal style with helping land her current position: “People can see your personality.” Jeff’s reasoning supported these sentiments: “I clicked her name to see what kind of stuff she tweeted about,” he said, “and it seemed mostly in line with my thinking.” Twitter heightens the chance of serendipitous meetings, allowing those with a few degrees of separation to find each other and connect in ways they might not have otherwise. It allows users to customize their level of involvement, and as Jeff put it “just throw something out there and it goes to the public timeline, not just followers- which allows you to reach a potentially wider audience.”

Both seemed to agree that despite the fortunate accident that brought them together, the key to making Twitter work for you is being proactive. Chelsea put her skills and desire out to a network of thousands, and was rewarded with Jeff’s interest and eventually, a job. “Along with a hefty campaign to brand myself and the name ‘hirechelsea’,” she said, “what it comes down to is I asked.”

Jeff and Chelsea’s conversation is archived here.