SOCIAL MEDIA
SOCIAL SKILLS
After completing over twenty lengthy application forms for placements – with no success – Rebecca Anne Hunter, a business and marketing student at Oxford Brookes University, turned to social media to try a different tack. Twitter proved to be her saviour…
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As a social media enthusiast, I decided to try to increase my chances of getting hired onto a placement scheme by writing a blog conveying some of my work experience…
T
his time last year I was searching various websites such as
www.RateMyPlacement.co.uk to find
out which companies offered marketing placement opportunities for students with the same qualifications and experience as I posses. After discovering which companies offer placement schemes and deciding on which companies were most suited to me, I started applying to a variety of large organisations. It was a hugely frustrating and time consuming process and I was becoming increasingly annoyed that so many companies didn’t want to take my application to the next stage. As a social media enthusiast, I decided to try to increase
my chances of getting hired onto a placement scheme by writing a blog conveying some of my work experience in more detail so that recruiters could see the relevant experience I have, reflecting why I would make a suitable placement student. This blog was also linked to my Twitter page (@RebeccaAnneHunt) and LinkedIn account, and was included on my CV so that recruiters could find out more information about me if they chose. Four months into my placement search I stumbled
across a tweet on my Twitter feed from RateMyPlacement which asked their followers to submit a tweets with 123 characters about why the company should choose them as a ‘wild card’ for their placement assessment day. As I was unaware that RateMyPlacement actually recruited their own placement students I jumped at the chance to work for the young and fun company. I submitted the following tweet:
‘@ratemyplacement As Vice-President
@OBEntrepreneurs & Head of Operations @brookestv I have the relevant experience 2 make the perfect intern’. Five minutes after tweeting, I could see that many
people from RateMyPlacement were viewing my LinkedIn account and there was also increased traffic to my blog. Thirty minutes later I received a direct message by the company who asked for my phone number. After a quick chat with Jamie Sweeney, a former placement student at RateMyPlacement, she informed that I had been chosen as the lucky ‘Wild Card’ for their assessment day. A few days after the assessment day I also found out that I had been selected as one of the three Marketing placement students at RateMyPlacement! Not only was it an extremely different and unique way of
getting a placement, it also conveys just how important social media is for recruiters when finding placement students and graduates. Social media channels such as blogs, LinkedIn, YouTube and a micro-blog like Twitter can all be used to find students online and find out more information about them that is not restricted to just a simple application form. These sites can also help companies to find the most ‘switched on’ students who might have problems jumping over the first hurdle when it comes to the application form in the recruitment process. Social media should become a useful enhancement for
recruiters searching for the top students and graduates, and I can see more and more companies using these channels in the future when searching for student talent.
http://rebeccaannehunter.blogspot.co.uk/
14 GRADUATE RECRUITER
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