Tweet your way to your dream career...

Never mind The Job Centre, there's tons of opportunities waiting for you on Twitter…

Did you know that Twitter is a bloomin’ great place to network and find jobs? If you didn’t, you do now. 10 million people in the UK have a Twitter account. If you’re not one of them, you should be.

Now, although you might think Twitter is full of people like your Cheryl Cole-loving best friend who wants nothing more than to get a ‘retweet’ from her Geordie idol, it’s actually a really useful tool for tracking down your next dream job. Although there are quite a few Cheryl super-fans out there too I’m afraid.

Below are some of my top tips for how to use the Twitterverse to its full potential. Whether it’s a new job, networking opportunities or training you’re looking for, that little blue bird is going to be your new best friend….

• First, you’ll need a snappy bio/profile/140 characters about you. This can be totally serious or slightly tongue-in-cheek, but it should say who you are, what you’ve done and what you want to do. With just 140 characters to spare this can seem somewhat challenging but it’s good practice for all the ‘Tell us about your entire life in less than 100 words’ questions you’ll get in long-winded job applications.

• Now it’s time to follow people. On twitter obviously. Not in real life. You don’t want a restraining order before you’ve even started. Follow people you’ve worked with, people in the industry and careers services. For telly people, @TheUnitlist is Twitter (and Facebook and website) GOLDUST as are all the indie production companies and media recruitment specialists.

• Now, you could spend days endlessly following useful people, but a good place to start once you’ve covered those you know personally is with key words and job titles in the ‘search’ field. You might find people looking to employ a new production secretary or runner, or someone who’s a successful production manager. These are all useful people to follow.

• Once you’ve done this you can start trawling through the important people’s followers and ‘followees’ (is that a word? Spellcheck seems to think not, but I like it anyway). People in TV (or any profession actually) seem to have lots of friends who do the same/similar things for a living (funny that) so follow some of them too (see, I warned you could spend days doing this). Eventually you’ll create a useful Twitter network.

• Don’t forget it’s also useful to follow people who might be in the same position as you. Whilst they might not be hugely wise and successful just yet, they might tweet about job opportunities or applications they’ve discovered.

• Once you’ve got your network sorted it’s time to start tweeting. You can tweet about anything, but remember if job-hunting’s on your mind it’s probably best to steer clear of the 3am "woaghh, frell oft the tablwe. P***ed as fart,… agaikn. Oops.” tweets. Tweet about things that excite you, tweet about TV, whilst watching TV, join in hashtag discussions and retweet stuff from people you follow.

• Every now and again (once you’ve got a few followers) it’s worth tweeting a hashtag-laden self-promotion tweet such as “Diligent, enthusiastic Media graduate looking for #runnerjobs. Please RT. #runner #TVjobs”. The more of your followers who retweet you, the wider your audience, the more followers you might gain, and you may even be contacted by someone who just happens to see your tweet as they’re crewing up a new production.

• Lastly, use your Twitter lists. Group all your career-relevant tweeters into one list and keep Gary Barlow and Victoria Beckham (unless either one of them starts posting job adverts any time soon) to a separate one.

So, now you’re armed with this valuable knowledge, track down that little blue birdie and sign up to the crazy world of celebrity-stalkers and bad grammar. Where else would you expect to find the job of a lifetime?