The test of a great idea: if you are embarrassed to explain it to a blog you don't think anyone is reading, it might not be one. Whatever, I promised you foibles- consider this a return on investment.
Regardless, in the interest of exploring the resources available to me as a scientist for finding a job, I've just signed up for Twitter. You are probably thinking the same thing I thought when my dear uncle first mentioned it to me: Score a job off twitter? No thanks, I want a legitimate career. But it keeps coming up. Most eloquently on this post as biojobsblog, which includes a quick tutorial on what you might be doing to use twitter to your advantage. The summary, find people giving out job information, re-tweet liberally, and this should gain you fame and affection, both of which may help you get an interview. It misses the key feature about interacting with recruiters though; if a recruiter is good at placing people in jobs they like, they constantly need new people for the empty jobs they have to fill. You are the commodity they need, so make yourself open and available (and don't tweet anything you'd be embarrassed to say in real life). I'll talk more about recruiters in the future, but for now, yes, job hunting via twitter seems to be a thing in general. But does it work for scientists?
While I don't have the Recruiting Animal's zeal for gaining twitter fame and popularity, I was surprised to see that there are a number of Science Recruiters on twitter who appear to use twitter for that sole purpose. I'll keep an update on this running experiment. With luck, science recruiters will be filling the space between Neil deGrasse Tyson and Carl Zimmer with hints and leads I will share with you.
In the meantime, feel free to follow me on twitter @SandlinSeguin
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