Recruitment via Twitter

You need a summer internship?! Cover letters and résumés are not your thing?

This agency called Campbell Mithun got that and used a pretty new way to recruit its interns for the summer 2011.

This article shows us how social media websites can be very useful if you are seeking for an internship.

Campbell Mithun used Twitter to hire 6 interns. Their campaign got famous quickly. The applicants had to submit 13 comments in 13 days on their Twitter account explaining why they wanted to be hired by the company. They also had to write a code in their comments so that everybody could see what the applicants had written. That brought more competition between all the potential interns because they could see what the others wrote about themselves and tried to do better.

The company selected 32 finalists and then invited them for an interview face-to-face or by Skype to hire the 6 summer interns.

I was impressed by this new way of seeking interns. This company is actually up to date and could start a new trend. I knew that companies could hire people by looking at their professional websites like LinkedIn and taking information from them on their other websites like Facebook. I also knew that a lot of companies become more successful by creating social media campaigns. But I did not know that some companies could create campaigns on social media websites to hire interns.

It is like an online competition to get a position, kind of like the campaign the Queensland tourism office did to hire for the “best job in the world”, but it did it on its own website not on a social media network like Twitter.

I think this is an amazing idea that this company has had. They wanted to hire interns so they chose to make a campaign on the newest and trendiest social media network at that time, so they could reach a bigger target. And they also understood that younger people do not really like sending cover letters and résumés but this new way is much more attractive and fun, and got peoples attention more quickly.

What do you think about this kind of recruitment? Would you apply for such a job campaign? 

Facebook: not any more transparent

I have just read this article and I am still in a state of shock!

This article tells us about a new web site that allows you to post comments on Facebook anonymously. It is easy to use, you just have to paste a URL before your comment and voila! your comment is anonymous!

At the beginning of the social media, or at least when I started to get on social media I had a blog where I could post all of my pictures and I could write down beside it what they were about and my friends could leave me comments. I was in middle school/high school and I remember that everybody could see my blog and left me comments. They just had to enter the name they wanted me to see. So my friends put their name or nickname but also some people wrote false names and left me negative comments. Usually at this time you have your friends but also enemies! And I could totally know who the senders were.

I think some bad stories were told to the creators of this website because one or two years later, you could not write any comments without your real name and only if you were a member of the website.

I think letting people be able to write comments with transparency is a bad thing because that can be used much more in a negative way than in a positive way.

Why would you hide positive and nice things you want to say to somebody, unless you are a hidden lover on Valentine’s Day!

However, there are numerous bad reasons that you would hide your name to write a mean comment… This website already gives us examples like insulting somebody. That can be very hurtful and can be dangerous. I mean if somebody is trying to make you lose your job or your friends or your boyfriend/girlfriend, writing comments anonymously would be a very useful weapon to use.

I am completely against that and I think Facebook should find a way to erase this new tool before a lot of people get hurt. If you want to be nice to someone, tell him/her and if you have a problem with somebody that is the same you should tell him/her.

What do you think about this website? Would you like receiving comments from someone that you do not know? 

Facebook Fans

Have you ever clicked on “I like” on a Facebook page for a sport team or for your favorite store? And then, do you often follow this page writing comments?

I have just read an article that deals with that. In fact, thanks to this “I like” application we could see which pages are the most famous and enjoyed by the internet users.

For example, a lot of Facebook pages are created on soccer teams.

When you look at two of them for a comparison you could think “FC Barcelona has more fans then Manchester United” (10,337,494 VS 9,915,504)… But actually that is not true.

The most important number you have to be aware of is the number of active fans. For those soccer teams FC Barcelona has 142,137 active members and Manchester United has 256,206 active fans. So we realize that in reality Manchester United has more than twice the number of fans of FC Barcelona.

The companies thought the number of “I like” was an important point to consider when you go online but in reality it is not the most important. That is why a New York start-up, FanGager, is uploading each month a ranking of the top 100 most ACTIVE fan pages. 

This ranking shows us all kind of pages, not just for the sport ones.

You can for example check the most famous artist. Justin Beiber has 20 million fans VS Lady Gaga has 29 million. But once again the tendency is reversed when you look at the number of active fans:  360,000 for Justin Beiber and 148,000 for Lady Gaga!

So, if you create your own page to go online with your company, check not only the number of fans but also the number of ACTIVE fans, because those ones are the most important for your business.

Kids on Social Media Websites

Since the web exists, we all heard that some problems relating to kids appeared.

Unfortunately, these perverts do not exist just in real life… They are also present on the web. Until now, parents could install an internet parental control blocking the websites considered dangerous. But that is not enough…

When internet appeared I remember my parents telling me to never communicate my name and address and other important data of my life through internet. At the beginning, it was pretty easy because there were not as many social media websites as now.

The more the world is getting at the cutting edge of technology, the more kids are in danger. Today, kids are so used to this tool that they do not even think something could be bad on it. Besides, through social media websites like Facebook or blogs, people (not just the kids) are likely to tell their life story and all their personal data and this tendency is becoming a norm…

I have just read this article and a number took me back : “CyberTipline, the nation's hotline for reporting sexual exploitation of children, received 223,374 reports in 2010, nearly double the number from 2009.”

The journalist also explains that with the increasing technology it allows those online pedophiles to reach the kids from everywhere and at any time they want. They can have access to the internet from their home, laptops, iPad, smartphones like IPhone…

That brings me to the strongest point of this article. Those kinds of persons are, today, able to find where the kids they are talking with live or are at the current moment. In fact, I think everybody saw on Facebook for example something like “whoever was at wherever with whoever”. This new social media tool is accessible through a smartphone GPS locator. With this tool the perverts can very easily and quickly find their prey.

To fight against that, there is not a lot of option. You cannot control the internet because it is too vast, but organizations are monitoring the most famous websites to seek out the pedophiles. So as a parent, the best solution is to keep an eye on what your child is doing online.

To conclude, once again we can see that there is not just good aspects of social media websites. Actually, in everything you can find the pros and cons. The internet is just like the real life: a jungle where the parents have to protect their progeny.