Social Networking for Employment Twittering Your Way to a Job

Sometimes the backstory on a story is better than the story itself. The story I produced today is in the embed below. I think it's pretty good but how it came to be is pretty entertaining too.

Friday our Web Producer Jason (@jerseyfreeze on Twitter) pitched a story about how people are using Social Networking to help find jobs for themselves. I was given the task of making this idea a TV story so I immediately turned to my Twitter and Facebook accounts looking for ideas.

At about the same time Greensboro Realtor Casey Durango (@CaseyDurango on Twitter) Retweeted (reposted) a Tweet (<140 character message on Twitter) from Jennifer Ruggiero (@jruggiero on Twitter) that she was looking for a new job.

Then, as happens in the news business, my story changed.

The bosses directed me to try to get into a naturalization ceremony at the Federal Courthouse. Well they don't let cameras in the Federal Courthouse so as I waited for them to call me back I added Jennifer to my Twitter Friends and tentatively set up a shoot with her at a time to be determined.

The Feds decided to let me into the courthouse for the ceremony so I planned with Jennifer to meet on Monday.

Then more news altered my plans. A winter weather system dumped 4-6 inches of snow on North Carolina paralyzing putting us into weather coverage mode.

I rescheduled with Jennifer and finally arrived at her place at 1030 Tuesday morning. I had also put in calls with the local Universities to find a business expert to speak about using the internet to network for jobs.

Without a call back by the time I was interviewing Jennifer I was pleased when she announce mid-interview that she knew someone who had successfully hired people based on Twitter networking. And that person...was one of the newer followers on my Twitter List. (WOW)

So she called Scott Brewster (@jrmozart on Twitter) and we set up an interview for just after lunch.

After I finished up shooting the interviews and corresponding cover video I made my way back to the station to transcribe the video, write the story, and borrow the voice of our nightside reporter Angela Rodriguez.

Of course the edit process was less than fun when the PC decided to burp, chuckle and freeze. I had no sooner pushed the send button to transfer my finished edit to the playback server when Neill and Julie were introducing a story they didn't even think was done.