As the year ends making way for a the New Year, the social media showdown heats up for the few job openings on the market. For starters, more and more job seekers are opting for the greener pastures that social media sites promise. Conversely, traditional job boards and job search engines are struggling to hold onto the inevitable change in tide towards social media networking. So what's driving the mass exodus? Well for one thing social media networking is people oriented, whereas job boards and job search engines are object oriented (no pun intended). People prefer to engage with other people - especially where gainful employment is concerned. Moreover, job seekers are fed up with some job boards publishing meritless job postings with the sole intent of collecting resumes that simply get sold or otherwise included in a resume database somewhere.

Job Search social media networking, also, tends to be promising due to the concept of real time web search. Nowadays, a tweet job search via twitter will reveal what's going in the job networking world for a given skill set right now...as opposed to a job posting that's 10 or 15 days old. The same concept applies to LinkedIn and Facebook, job seekers can connect with employers real time with respect to current job openings or upcoming employment opportunities. A huge plus for employers is that even if a job seeker prospect doesn't appear to be a good fit, the employer can ask for a referral from the declining job seeker which most job seekers will happily provide. On top of that, most of time employers can obtain a referral simply for the asking, without traditional big ticket referral fees. So while there may only be a few job openings at the moment, the social media showdown between Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook heats up as the New Year approaches. You can expect the intensity to pick up as we cross over into the New Year which some seem to think will be a rather busy time for hiring. While the verdict is still out on how much hiring will happen, it's no secret more and more jobs will be networked through social media.

The scarce job market has prompted job search creativity for many job seekers, including mining Twitter tweets in the quest to find a job. The big question is whether or not it's that simple as tuning in to a few tweets and landing the next gig. Well, as is the case with everything else, sometimes people tend to oversimplify situations; such is the case with Twitter tweet mining. The reality is that mining Twitter for job leads is an investment in time and energy just like anything else. So establishing realistic expectations and targeting job related tweets best positions job seekers for landing a job using Twitter.

So what's the profile for job seekers that will undoubtedly be successful with Twitter tweet mining?

1. Socialites - the ones that are open and like to chat with and meet new people.
2. Less is More - small businesses account for more than 50% of hiring - so who should you be targeting?
3. Persistence - jobs are few and far between which means you might have to put in a little time before the results come. Sorry the instant gratification mentality won't work here.

Since "time is money," quite often its smarter to leverage tools and services that save you the time and grunt work, so you can get back to work sooner versus later. Real Tweets is an invaluable tool for mining Twitter job leads in the quest for gainful employment. Who wants to spend Christmas penniless and explaining to their girlfriend why it wasn't possible to get that shiny new tennis bracelet? Good luck with that one buddy. Being broke on Christmas is not cool, nor is sleeping with the dog on Christmas. Avoid the unnecessary punishment, mining Twitter tweets to find a job is best accomplished with Real Tweets. Moreover, if you get to work now you just might get a pay check before Christmas!

If you are one of the many that has leaped head first into the social networking craze than you may very well know that landing a job through social networking requires a significant investment in time. That might surprise you if you bought into all the buzz about this person or that person finding their current job via social networking.

First and foremost, social networking is a new way of communicating and engaging with people so the number of job search success stories are few and far between. Why? Two reasons:

1. The players from the job board scene have migrated to social media networking sites.
2. Time spent filtering the endless sea of "look at me tweets" from real job related tweets.

Even for the Brand Nubian, if you spend just a few hours on Twitter you will soon come to the realization that the usual suspect job boards are there tweet-ing away. How can you tell? From the barrage of tweets speaking more about the job board's name than providing useful job tweets from which you can benefit. Moreover, a lot of these tweets are automated originating from unmanned Twitter accounts or from Twitter accounts that are paid to repeatedly tweet the job board's name. I don't know about you but that seems a little suspect to me.

As part of getting your feet wet, with identifying who's who, with respect to paid tweeters and unmanned Twitter accounts, you will undoubtedly have to filter through a lot of tweets to get to that one tweet that provides the job lead you're looking for. It's like finding a needle in a haystack. Finding a needle in a haystack requires a bunch of time and patience. Thus, you shouldn't be in a hurry or otherwise be mislead from isolated job search success stories.

The bottom line is that with time comes experience which ultimately leads to you becoming much more efficient with using social networking in your job search. Thus, landing a job with social networking requires time and patience. It's pretty much like anything else in that you simply have to learn the strengths and weaknesses of social networking before you can capitalize on the strengths and minimize your time with the weaknesses. If you keep in mind that your focus should be on meeting new people based on targeted job tweets than you will be fine.