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?
I have heard about things like this. This is also one of the main reason I got a twitter account. So many businesses today are using social media sites to hire new employees. I figured I would go ahead and start marketing myself through twitter. I also thought that it was interesting that they viewed the profiles of the applicants as if they were their resumes. I know on networks such as linkedIn you can upload your resume to your LiknedIn profile for people to view. I would definitely use the type of recruitment for job searching, it seems to be successful.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a great type of recruitment. It gives the interested interns a chance to think fast on their toes, and it gives the company a good idea of how well the applicants work in social media, which is an important skill that can come in handy for any business. A downfall to this is that they can't see previous experience of the applicants and you never know who is on the other end of a computer, so the applicants could be receiving help from outside sources.
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