How To Recruit with Twitter Trends
Twitter is a website that I cannot geek without. I am on it waaaaay more than I should be but if loving Twitter is wrong, I don’t wanna be right. (Hmmm… did I just date myself by quoting that song lyric?) Well, hmm… where was I? Oh yeah! Twitter. One thing I like about Twitter is that it helps me keep tabs on what’s important to the masses at any given time. If you are a power user of Twitter (or a novice for that matter), then you know about “Trending topics.”

Just in case you didn’t know (or care), trending topics let’s you see what the most popular topics being discussed at that very moment on Twitter. Now this is great if you are an infojunky, but what if you only care about what you care about? Is there a way to see what is popular with a certain niche of Twitter users? Why, yes, there most certainly is. Simply go to the Twitter search page and use some of their advanced search functionality. For example, check out the screenshot below.

This is the search string I used –> #lrnchat filter:links include:retweets
What I am asking Twitter is to:
1.) Find tweets that are using the hashtag “#lrnchat”
2.) Return tweets that include links to some website.
3.) Return tweets that have been retweeted
Get it? I am focusing on a niche topic (#lrnchat is a hashtag for teachers discussing the education industry), asking for tweets with links will let me see what websites are hot at the moment and if they are being retweeted a lot, then I know that they are especially relevant. Make sense? I have been looking for a tool that will do this for me automatically, but have not found one yet that I like.
Here are a few suggestions on how you can leverage this trick:
- Zero in on passive candidates discussing your industry.
- Zero in on popular websites being discussed by passive candidates and see if you can leverage that somehow. Maybe you can pass it on to the next passive candidate you reach out to? (Hey Bob, this article was getting some buzz and I thought I would share.)
- Zero in on websites that you might want to tweet yourself with the hope that it will attract passive candidates your way. It works for me. (Smile)
I would love to hear about your experiences with this technique.
Happy hunting!

How To Find Free Resumes and
Passive Candidates on Google
P.S. If you like this type of thing, you will love my book – Resume Forensics. Just sayin’…




