Job seekers in Calgary are using social networking sites such as Twitter to improve their odds of landing work, as a survey released Tuesday indicates the majority of employers in the city aren't hiring.

Cameron Keith, 57, has been using an online service called TweetMyJOBS as well as his own Twitter account to shop his resume around.

Employers can post positions on TweetMyJOBS, which then instantly notifies job seekers through Twitter and cellphone text messages. People looking for work can also upload their resumes and websites to the site.

'You have to be creative. If you have one more avenue — no matter what it is — than the next guy, you have an advantage.'—Cameron Keith, job seeker

Twitter limits messages to 140 characters, but job hunters can easily post links to online resumes, or use hashtags, such as #tweetmyjob, to encourage other Twitter users to forward the messages, as Keith has been doing.

"You have to be creative. If you have one more avenue — no matter what it is — than the next guy, you have an advantage," he said on Tuesday.

The latest employment outlook survey, released by consulting company Manpower on Tuesday, indicates that 64 per cent of Calgary employers who responded are maintaining their current staffing — and not hiring. Eighteen per cent of Calgary companies told the survey they're planning to cut staff.

"Employers are taking more of a wait-and-see attitude as far as what they're going to be doing, to really make any changes to their head counts within the next quarter," said Shameer Tharani, Manpower's Calgary office manager.

Additional job-finding avenues

Posting links on Twitter will not eliminate the need for traditional job boards or online listings but it's an avenue to reach a wider audience, said Connor Turner, owner of Armadillo Studios, which consults on social networking for small businesses.

"People are using Twitter and Facebook just to get the word out there and show a connection and then drive them back to the original form like their website and the job posting," he said.

"It's just an indirect way, a more personal way to get out there and touch people and provide the information that people are looking for."

Keith, who has had a varied career from oil and gas piping designer to general renovation contractor to art instructor, said he's received some responses to his job search in the last two months, but he's still looking for work.