Ex-recruiter is brains behind new application for Twitter job searches

28-October-2009 | By Sue Weekes

A former recruiter is launching a service that manages the candidate’s jobseeking process on Twitter and ensures they only receive Tweets about relevant jobs.

Tweetjobs.net, the brainchild of Richard Sutcliffe, who worked in recruitment for nine years, will also manage the process from the recruiter or employer’s side. Sutcliffe told Recruiter that he is already in talks about possible launches in the US, Middle East, Australia and New Zealand, and intends extending the service to other social media sites in time.

“More and more companies are moving to a direct sourcing model, so we want the service to evolve and encapsulate as many social media platforms as we can,” he said.

Sutcliffe explained that he wanted to get around what he saw as the two main issues associated with using Twitter in recruitment: preventing the candidates from receiving hundreds of Tweets a day, many of which were irrelevant jobs; and the 140-character limitation. The candidate application gets around the first by allowing users to specify industries and locations when they sign up.

As regards the second challenge, when a job is posted from a recruiter or direct employer, the software automatically takes key information such as job title, key skills, location, starting salary and URL link to the client website, formats it and sends it out in real-time to the candidate’s Twitter account. This can include via RSS feed to a mobile.

Tweetjobs.net acquired more than 200 members within a couple of days of its trial launch, including senior HR people, recruitment agencies and candidates. Trials are currently underway with a number of organisations from within financial services and education sectors, as well as recruitment. Sutcliffe is also in talks with a major multi-posting company and software supplier about how the applications could be integrated with their products.

Tweetjobs.net will gain its revenue from clients who post jobs to Twitter via the site, and Sutcliffe said most clients will be spending “pence not pounds” (cost will be based on volume).

“Recruitment is evolving,” said Sutcliffe. “A lot of it is cost-driven, from recruitment companies buying adverts and CVs to end clients using direct sourcing. Why spend pounds, sometimes hundreds of pounds, when you can spend pence?”

Darren, a contractor, was one of the first to sign up to Tweetjobs.net and believes the real-time posting will help him hear about new opportunities more quickly and wherever he is. “The emails from the job boards are usually full of clutter that I don’t want to read,” he said.

“There isn’t room for that on Twitter and I’ll just hear about the vacancies. That’s better for me.”
www.tweetjobs.net