Sears will tweet job openings

Sears Holding Corp. said Wednesday 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 from $4,000 for 500 postings 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 and pledges to list only jobs from reputable companies.

“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, a Sears human relations executive, said the company wants to see what social media can offer in employment, advertising and in ensuring their 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.

Cancino writes for the Chicago Tribune.