The “Career Counselor's Guides to Social Media in the Job Search” were originally written and have been recently updated by Kevin Grubb of Villanova University, Shannon Conklin of Temple University, and Megan Wolleben of Bucknell University. The updated guides are available at www.naceweb.org/knowledge/social-media/career-counselors-guide.aspx. Following is information from “The Career Counselor's Guide to Twitter.”

How can career services practitioners help students use Twitter chats to get information about careers and the job market? First, they must understand the basics about these virtual conversations.

A Twitter chat (also known as a tweetchat) is an organized event, sometimes occurring at regular times, for which Twitter users tweet using a pre-arranged hashtag. It is similar to a webinar or live event, but while these may only occur once or twice, Twitter chats frequently recur at the same time weekly or monthly. Chats generally have moderators and are centered around specific topics.

For example, NPR hosts a chat called “Job Hunt and Social Media,” using #NPRTwitterChat. If a student wanted to join it, he or she would search the given chat hashtag on Twitter at the prearranged date and time. That would allow the student to follow the conversation. If the student wanted to actively join in the conversation, he or she would use #NPRTwitterChat in tweets.

A tip for tweetchats: Some people recommend to warn followers before the chat begins. Sometimes a quick tweet saying “I’m going into #xchat for a while. Pardon the tweets.” or something similar helps to alert a network to this. It may also bring new people into the conversation.

Students can also view a list of tweetchats on this Twitter Chat Schedule website. To find a chat by keyword or phrase, students can hit Ctrl + F (or “Find” in a web browser) to search the text of this site.