Which online social network is the best when looking for a new job? If you had asked me 2 weeks ago I would have told you it was LinkedIn, but it turns out LinkedIn is a distant second.

I have always maintained a bit of separation in my social networks.

Facebook is for friends and family and a few people from the “work world” that I trust won’t hold my occasional political rant against me. I almost never post anything work related there.

LinkedIn is primarily just work-related folks. I post almost exclusively work related stuff here. Stuff I wouldn’t mind prospective employers seeing.

Twitter is where I let the two worlds meet. I follow a broad range of people and I tweet personal, political, humorous and work stuff.

My expectation has always been that if I needed to find a job, my LinkedIn network would be the most valuable. And when it recently became apparent that my current employer wasn’t going to work out long-term I posted the following on LinkedIn:

I also posted this similar message on Twitter:

The response from LinkedIn was OK, I guess. few people liked it, a few of my former coworkers suggested positions at their current companies, and a recruiter contacted me, but never responded after I said I was only willing to make the 2hr drive to the office a few times a month.

The response on Twitter was overwhelming. A few people liked it, a bunch of people re-tweeted it, and total strangers contacted me about open positions that allowed remote. Most of those positions were at the companies they worked, but a few people pointed me to positions at companies they didn’t work for but knew were hiring remote developers.

Twitter resulted in interviews with 3 companies that I’d be interested in working for.

  LinkedIn Twitter
Followers 231 425
Views 877 16.3k
Likes 9 22
Comments 2 6
Shares 0 99
Job Openings 3 15
Interesting to Me 0 5
Interviews 0 3

Why Twitter?

I’m just guessing here, but I think it comes down to two things:

  1. Twitter is more active. I check LinkedIn just about once a week. And I rarely if ever scroll through the feed there.
  2. Part of the Twitter experience is re-tweeting. Sharing posts is an option in LinkedIn, but it’s not used as often.

Takeaways

  • Build your Twitter network as best as you can. I’ve put work into providing some good content over the years to get to the number of followers I have.
  • Return the favor. When you see someone post that they are looking for work, retweet that. Same for companies looking to fill positions.
  • Nurture the rest of your network too. Twitter was far more effective for me, but I did get some leads from LinkedIn, those came from people that aren’t active on Twitter as far as I know. Those positions weren’t interesting this time, but you never know what’s going to come up.