I hate job hunting. I don’t mind the actual hunting part. And if I make it that far, I don’t really mind the job interview, the getting hired or the receiving a steady paycheque parts either. What I hate is the amount of work involved to write or fine tune the resume, concoct a persuasive and grammatically correct cover letter and gather work samples together into a visually pleasing format. So I was quite pleased to find out that now you can find a job just by writing a message that’s, oh, about 140 characters long.

Yes, Twitter, and other social networks, are the newest way to get your butt off the dole and back into an office where you belong. Most of us already know about LinkedIn as a way to connect with potential employers, or employees. And since so many work peers are connected on Facebook, that’s a natural way to put out the word about your current employment status, or lack thereof. But Twitter? Really? Do people honestly think that whipping off a 10 second “cover letter” tweet will find them a job? Apparently they do, and they might even be right.

Experts always say that networking is the best way to find a job. So online social networks, where it’s easy to have a much wider group of contacts, are bound to help in your search. You might not land a job or interview from that little tweet, but it could certainly get you in the door. And clearly, lots of people believe. If you do a search on Twitter for: “looking for job” you’ll see pages and pages of tweets by people that are doing just that. You’ll also likely find links to job-resource website, job listings and maybe even a link to a story about how to use a lemonade stand to find a job.

Once you find that dream job, though, you might want to ease off on the social networking. These days, stories abound about people losing their jobs for innocent Facebook transgressions like referring to the President of the U.S. as “O-dumb-a” or taking a moment away from your job as an EMT to post a photo of the murder victim currently riding in your ambulance. Okay, so maybe they weren’t all that innocent…