Job seekers need facts! It's heartbreaking. Almost heartbraking. The way so many people start their job ads on Twitter with a rave and a ramble about life in general instead of facts.
Twitter is a perfect place for job ads. But time and again, advertisers blow it by failing to describe the job or the worker they need.
They write an ad for a regular web page or forum. They forget the ad is going to turn up on Twitter, so they waste most of those precious 140 characters on blah. Twitterfeed recycles the first few words — whatever they are. Twitterfeed doesn't edit (doh).
Take these, for instance, on geekzonenzjobs.
Job: If you're a people person with good applications performance analysis skills, who enjoys interacting wi..
Job: Become part of one of NZ's success stories and join one of the best development teams around. Leading e..
Job: Intermediate BA (3-4 yrs experience) to join 8 other BA's in what has been described to me as a down to..
Job: Sick of playing second fiddle? Ready to fine tune your life and break free from your cubicle? Melbourne..
Job: Work Life Balance in a Multi-International, Really? Advance your career, rewards are plentiful. You owe..
OK, now for a few that fully exploit their allotment of characters and make sense on Twitter. And gosh they were hard to find. As you see these are not deathless prose: because they're written for job seekers, not creative writing students.
Job: 12 Month Fixed Term contract. Novell: IT & Technology : Help Desk/Support (Full time) Desktop Sup..
Job: XSL Developer for established company in Auckland CBD: Do you know your XSL from your XML? Young V..
Job: * 5+ years experience as Business Analyst * Experienced with Billing Systems * Auckland East location: ..
Writing for Twitter is no different from writing other web content. It's simply web content writing on steroids. A tweet is a headline, actually, with a few bonus words that summarise the page.
If you want to know why we all need to be trained to write for the web, look no further than Twitter.
People who've done the CONTENTED courses in web content writing would spot the problem in a nanosecond. They know a web page should not start with a nice little chat. They'd delete meaningless feel-good phrases and start with facts, facts, facts. They'd make darn sure the first 20-odd words contained at least some keywords.
Then maybe the employees they need would notice the ad, and apply.
Broken heart image from michiyoemi on FlickR: thanks.
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