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Sears and Kmart will advertise jobs on Twitter

Alejandra Cancino Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO – Sears Holding Corp. said last week that more than 7,000 job openings at Sears and K-Mart will be posted on Twitter, a move experts say is a way to advertise and market its brands to 18- to 34-year-olds, the mainstay of the social networking site.

“It allows for multiple ways to communicate a positive message and achieve multiple goals within an organization from marketing to (human resources),” said Mike Dwyer, a social media strategist for Aon Consulting.

Sears Holdings said the job tweets will be posted by TweetMyJobs.com, which also handles similar postings from McDonald’s and Motorola. McDonald’s advertises more than 1,300 jobs on Twitter and Motorola more than 300.

Though Twitter is free, TweetMyJobs.com charges $4,000 for 500 postings, and up to $8,000 for unlimited postings, said Rich Trombetta, a company co-founder. It charges $1.99 for single posts.

The company also offers clients the ability to track the number of clicks on job postings.

“We are very careful about the types of jobs we list on the site,” Trombetta said. “We eliminate the spam, these ‘make-a-million-dollars- in-an-hour’ type of jobs.”

Lance Brolin, of Sears, said the company wants to see what social media can offer in employment, advertising and in ensuring messages are getting to the right candidates.

How does the message get to the right candidates?

First, job seekers create an account on TweetMyJobs.com. From there they can link their profile to their Twitter account and can subscribe to any of the 8,397 job channels. For example, there is a channel to receive updates when an accounting job is posted in Chicago. If your Twitter account is linked to your e-mail or phone, you’ll receive an instant notification.

Dwyer said it’s a no-brainer that companies would want to use Twitter.

“Any time that (companies) are able to get a message out there that they are growing, that they have opportunities, is going to look good for them with the public,” Dwyer said. “If you have 7,000 job openings and you are tweeting all those job openings out there, that’s a lot of positive communication that’s going on with the public.”