To twitter or not to twitter with Australian Graduates
Lately there has been a lot of commentary about the low levels of uptake of younger people using twitter. Only around 16% of twitter users are in the 2 24 year old age bracket (I would hate to see what a 2 year old twitter user is like) according to this post on mashable (a social media commentary site), so you can assume that there is only around 5 10% of users on twitter in the university student age bracket of around 18 24. We've had about 4,500 graduate job hunters that have visited our site that have told us what internet freedoms they would value having access to at work. Only around 5.5% of these graduate job hunters told us that they would value having access to twitter while at work which is fairly indicative of the twitter user base out there in the graduate job hunter space. This seems to be fairly low compared to the numbers of Australian graduates on facebook which by our count is over 70% so is it worth putting any effort into a graduate recruitment twitter account to attract quality grads in Australia.
Aussie twitter grads, a snapshot
From the roughly 300 graduate job hunters that have come through the site and told us that they are interested in having access to twitter while at work there were a few trends that came through. Australian graduates that are using twitter are currently most interested in working in Information Technology (19%), Generalist graduate positions (16%) , Marketing (14%), Accounting (12%) and Engineering (8%). Grads on twitter also seem to have high grades as can be seen in the table below, with about 49% of graduates on twitter having a distinction or high distinction grade average.
Grade AveragePercentage of twitter users High Distinction Grade Average 11% Distinction Grade Average 38% Credit Grade Average 44% Passing Grade 7%As you can see in the next table, we've found that most grads out there in the online social media universe are currently completing their bachelors degree:
Level of DegreePercentage of twitter users Bachelors Degree 72% Bachelors Degree with Honours 9% Masters Degree 13% Post Graduate Diploma 3% PHD 2%So who should be using twitter?
Well from the somd of the figures above it looks like IT employers who are looking to get in touch with high calibre grads will probably get the most benefit out of interacting with them via twitter. You won't be speaking to a high number of graduates, but the ones you do touch base with in a more conversational manner vwill be of a high calibre in general. If your organisation is after early adopters and innovators, at the moment twitter usage is still in the early adopter phase, making it a good channel to start identifying interacting with this sort of graduate. One word of warning, twitter has a low barrier to entry but with all social media & networking platforms it's better to not use them at all as opposed to using them badly, so if you are sure you can commit some time to running a twitter account for your graduate program then get out there and get involved.