Flurry of interest in first Twitter-integrated job ad

Last week saw the launch of the first ever Twitter-integrated job ad, allowing candidates to put their name forward for a position without leaving the channel. In the wake of this event, HRM Online talked to Paul Jacobs, creative director of JobGram, to find out his thoughts on the development.

For Jacobs, it wasn’t entirely unexpected. “I sort of have been expecting this and I have been talking to some developers in this space (and I think you can expect something soonish from jobgram in this space, I must admit).” However, at the moment, there is no public access - you have to work with developers who have pre-existing relationships with Twitter.

While the job ad can be seen as an expansion of expanded Tweets, there is a key difference. “It’s about keeping you on the platform, rather than flicking you off onto other platforms. For me, that’s a big, big positive,” Jacobs said.

The move is a good one, according to Jacobs - he observed that a spokesperson from Zartis said that it was the best response they’ve ever had to any campaign. “But I think there’s an element of it was getting a lot of PR. People were clicking on, including myself. I’m not actually a candidate, or interested in those jobs there, but I clicked on the link,” Jacobs explained.

In other words, there’s a lot of interest form people who are interested in the idea of a Twitter job ad, rather than interested in the actual job.

Nonetheless, the innovation is helpful to recruiters for a number of reasons:

• “One is that driving leads side, which to me is sort of like trying to build up a larger talent pool,” Jacobs said. And Jacobs noted that Twitter is the strongest performing social media channel when it comes to driving leads.
• “The other aspect is the visual side: it’s nice to have a photo or something visual, but it’s also the opportunity for rich media and having video, having a poll. The opportunities are endless, and I think they’re beyond, ‘Here we’ve got some job vacancies, now give us your details'.”

However, it’s not just recruiters that will reap the benefits.  Twitter, which has more than 500 million registered users worldwide, also holds opportunities for job seekers to target employers and recruiters. “It could even be the dawning of the 140 character CV, which I think could be quite exciting,” Jacobs said. He also suggested that you could use the 140 characters of a Tweet, accompanied by an image or video. “I think it has potential even to have some live streaming sort of element here, like live chat…turn Twitter into a real conversational platform – but that’s a bit of a guess,” he said.

You can see the ad here.