When you do a job hunt on Glassdoor, you can read reviews, see salary information and photos, etc. all provided by current and former employees of the company you are researching.

Now, with the Facebook integration, you can see what sort of connections you have with the company from within your Facebook friends that might give you an “in” for the job.

This reality of the times we live in is played out all the time across social media channels. In particular, LinkedIn is the recruiters haven of social media as headhunters who collect connections like the business version of baseball cards. Collect’em all and trade with your friends who need a new VP of something or other. Hey, I’ll trade a VP of Biz Dev for two Directors of marketing!

Of course, you can’t expect something as current and pervasive as extreme unemployment to escape the grip of Twitter. The social media powerhouse is still figuring out those revenue thingys while other are using it for more and more practical purposes (that generate a penny for the company).

The newest is TwitJobSearch. We learn more from the New York Times technology blog Bits.

In the last month, 340,000 jobs have been listed on Twitter, said William Fischer, co-founder of WorkDigital, which created TwitJobSearch, a site that searches Twitter for jobs.

The latest tool that job hunters can use to find openings is called JobDeck, a new product from TwitJobSearch and TweetDeck, a desktop Twitter application.

TwitJobSearch scans Twitter for job postings by paying attention to the context in which employment-related keywords appear. For example, if a Tweet links to a story about the construction industry losing jobs, that should not show up on the list. If a Tweet says there is a job listing for an assistant to the vice president, the search engine needs to categorize it under openings for assistants, not vice presidents.

There are many early success stories in using Twitter as a job search tool and recruiting tool. JobDeck even pulls job listings from LinkedIn. This all makes sense especially of you are looking for some help with social related activities since those using the service are already at least on the platform. It doesn’t stop there though as the opportunities for many different jobs are popping up on Twitter.

The article gave this quick sketch of a real success story.

On Jan. 7, Richard Barton, chief executive of the real estate Web site Zillow.com, fired off this Tweet: “Greg Slyngstad & I are cooking up a consumer internet startup. R U our founding CTO? Seeking smart, passionate team-builder.” (Mr. Slyngstad and Mr. Barton helped start Expedia together.)

“We were deluged with résumés,” Mr. Barton said. “It’s the most powerful recruiting tool I’ve ever used.”

He has also hired three Zillow employees using Twitter, including its new marketing director. Mr. Barton says Twitter is especially useful for job announcements because, unlike e-mail, recipients do not need to respond unless they are interested in applying or know someone who might be.

So if you are in the market for a job or are looking for new job opportunities don’t discount Twitter as a great resource. Just be ready to make that first impression in 140 characters or less.

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Probably thinking he was reporting a misbehaving student, Greenbaum contacted the school and explained the situation. Six hours later, the school called back: they’d found the commenter—an employee. After they confronted him, the employee resigned.

Most of us probably have an intrinsic notion that the anonymous commenter and Greenbaum both acted inappropriately (although there was no way for Greenbaum to know he was turning in an employee and not a student)—but perhaps the more important question is whether they were acting legally.

Greenbaum, a Post-Dispatch employee, should be bound by the paper’s online privacy policy, which states:

We will not share individual user information with third parties unless the user has specifically approved the release of that information.

However, at the beginning of the policy, they stipulate that “Your IP address does not contain personally identifiable information, nor does it identify you personally.” So is that individual user information? Sounds like it’s not.

And the Post-Dispatch’s ToS is an exercise in CYA (they define “submission” to include comments):

• You automatically waive any claim that any use of such content violates any of your rights, including privacy rights, publicity rights, moral rights or any other right, including the right to approve the way we use such content.
• You are responsible for the content of all Submissions and acknowledge that third parties may hold you responsible for content related claims including libel, invasion of privacy, misappropriation of likeness and disclosure of confidential information.
• You shall indemnify, defend and hold us, our parent company and our affiliated entities (including our officers, directors, owners, agents and employees) harmless from all liability and costs incurred by those indemnified in connection with any claim arising out of any breach by you of the above representations and warranties and for any claims related to the content or your Submissions.

And, naturally, the ToS stipulates that using the site to “upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available content that is harmful to minors in any way, or that is harassing, harmful, threatening, abusive, vulgar, obscene, defamatory, libelous, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable” violates the ToS, too.

And how were Anon’s actions illegal? Well, setting aside possible obscenity charges (while legally problematic, “obscenity” is not protected under the First Amendment), the school probably also has policies—policies that dictate the use of school resources. Most likely, this comment was made on school time, from a school computer, using the school’s Internet connection. Somehow, I can’t imagine there’s a provision in the policy that allows for use of school resources for posting vulgar comments online. By violating these policies, the employee could face discipline or even termination.

What do you think? Would these policies hold up in court?

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A case in point is what happened at New York Newsday. The New York Times reports

Customers of Cablevision, the cable and Internet provider that owns Newsday, and people who subscribe to Newsday in print will still be able to browse Newsday.com unfettered. But Newsday recently announced that everyone else will have to pay $5 a week to see much of the site, making it one of the few newspapers in the country to take such a plunge.

As a result of this announcement long time columnist Saul Friedman threw in the pen, so to speak, and walked.

In an interview, Mr. Friedman said, “My column has been popular around the country, but now it was really going to be impossible for people outside Long Island to read it.” That includes him; living outside Washington, he is not a subscriber to Newsday or Cablevision.

This sounds like a real bold move I know but now the cynic in me (which I love and hate all at once) has to take into account the fact that Mr. Friedman is 80 years old. Not exactly the prime of his career but he could go on writing for many, many, many more years (and I sincerely hope he does). While this is noble it’s not the same as if some newspaper industry giant walked away from a central job at a huge paper to make the point. Once again, I am not trying to minimize what Mr. Friedman is saying but I am trying to see this in context.

I’m actually more interested in how many people are willing to spend the $5 a week for the paper online? If they are not sacrificing their current subscribers and most of the New York region is a Cablevision subscriber is Newsday really doing anything here other than trying to make a few bucks? There are quite a few folks who have left the New York area for other areas of the country but most don’t check back on the local media but occasionally (I am one of those). If I had to pay $5 a week for it I would go without it for sure because it is for fun and not a necessity.

If you have moved from somewhere would you pay for access to the local media to keep up? All of you transplants from Chicago, LA, Philly etc do you care that much about what happens ‘back home’?

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I guess it’s one way of noting a preference that applicants are savvy, active and connected in the twittersphere and, by implication, might have a better understanding of how social media tools like this work in a business context.

I’m not surprised to see this in a recruitment ad by Best Buy.

This is the company whose President and COO (now CEO), Brian J. Dunn – who, incidentally,  is on Twitter – was awarded the IABC EXCEL Award this year and whose keynote address about communication at the IABC conference in San Francisco in early June was one of the most inspiring I’ve ever heard from a senior corporate executive of any company (here’s  a taste of what Dunn said, in a brief Audioboo I recorded from my spot in the auditorium).

The IABC EXCEL Award recognizes leaders who foster excellence in communication and contribute to the development and support of organizational communication.

So, Twitter followers as a preferred ‘qualification’ when recruiting. Is this a sign of the (coming) times?

This has clearly captured many people’s imaginations this morning, judging by the number of retweets of my  original post on Friendfeed about it, as well as retweets of this blog post.

(Via Nathan Driver)

[Later] A comment by Best Buy’s Joshua Kahn talked about a new development regarding this recruitment opening that would be posted today on Barry Judge’s blog. He is Best Buy’s CMO.

Sure enough, there is now a post that opens up an intriguing development in what I’d call the co-creation of a job description in a way that would make a distinct connection with people who have an interest in the company, not only those looking for a job. There’s also the huge buzz potential that gets Best Buy talked about.

[…] In following the conversation around this job posting we discovered that many people had other ideas for how this job description should look, and what the qualifications should be.  We realized that perhaps we hadn’t thought of everything.  Beyond that we thought perhaps we could find a way to enable a more pointed discussion about this relatively new job category of Emerging Media.

It seemed to us to be a natural progression to get the community involved in crafting the job description and qualifications. So that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

We’d like you, (yes all of you), to help us write the job description for our Sr Manager of Emerging Media Marketing job.

We’d also like you all to help us pick the best description.

Here’s How To Participate

1. Starting now, until Tuesday, July 14th, at 5pm central submit your job description idea to our Best Buy IdeaX site.  IdeaX is a site where people like you can share your own ideas on how to make Best Buy better – through idea posts, popular vote and discussions with the rest of the IdeaX community.

I do like the rationale Judge expresses, especially his number 2 point:

This role is a new one for us as it likely is for other companies. We have a lot of smart and social media savvy people here and amongst our partners and friends.  However, there are a larger number of smart and social media savvy people “out there”. So instead of thinking we know it all, we’d like to increase our chances of getting it right by surveying the wisdom of the industry.

Sort of an Ideastorm for HR.

This should catch on.

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One such person apparently Tweeted herself out of a nice job at Cisco with this tweet:

Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

You know where this is going, don’t you?

So, Cisco–being a TECH COMPANY–has people that use, you know, the web! One such employee, Timmy Levad a channel partner for Cisco, saw the tweet and sent back a reply which I’m sure sent shivers down the spine of the potential new recruit:

@theconnor then apparently set her account to private, closed the window shades, and hid under the bed–hoping it would all just go away. No news yet on whether she still got the job, but you can keep track of the saga here.

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This dude has the coolest job in the world. He’s the audio engineer at Austin City Limits and has been for decades.

Anyone have a cooler job? It’s my goal to meet all the people in the world with cool jobs. I figure that’ll keep me busy for at least a few months.

One way you know that they have a cool job? They don’t leave.

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