We’re currently working with pan-European executive recruiter MRL Group on their Corporate Social Networking / Social Recruiting strategy.  As part of this programme, MRL are  recruiting Twinters -  paid social media internships - for their Hove (nr. Brighton) HQ.  Full details below / here , please do share with anyone you feel relevant.

Twinterns (Social Media Internships)

Leading Pan-European Recruitment Group. Immediate Start.

3-12 month contract duration. Hove.

MRL is a dynamic, market leading executive recruitment business, with offices in the UK and Germany. In order to support our investment in an extensive social media programme, we’re currently looking to recruit our first ever “Twinterns” – a 3-12 month internships working closely with our management teams and consultants to support the professional use of LinkedIn, Twitter and other online tools throughout our business.

This is really a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience of social media marketing and corporate networking in an environment where you really will have a vital role to play in the future of our business. You’ll spend your first week being trained by one of London’s leading social media practices, and then you’ll be straight onto the job of helping our consultants develop authentic, engaging conversations with our candidates and customers.

It goes without saying that we’re looking for someone who knows the difference between LinkedIn and Facebook, and is a demonstrably passionate participant in all types of social media. Just as importantly, you’ll be able to impart your enthusiasm to our team, helping them understand the business case for using these tools to build richer, deeper, relationships with our stakeholders.

This is a paid internship, and we are offering 11k per annum, and we’re offering a bonus for truly exceptional performance…

Please apply via kelly.robertson@mrl-group.com

To apply, please forward your CV to and we’ll begin the conversation from there.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you.

Prompted by the good people at Chinwag, we are now recruiting our very own twintern for the Summer. Graduates,  start sending your CVs to Adelaide@carveconsulting.com . We can’t wait to have the next social media expert on board for a few weeks!

Here is what our offer looks like:

You are passionate about all things social media, and are actively participating in a wide variety of web 2.0 activities such as blogging, social bookmarking, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You would like to learn how to translate your passion into coherent and cutting-edge strategies for corporate organisations.

Carve Consulting is a digital engagement practice specialising in Corporate Social Networks, Online PR, Social Media Monitoring and Search Engine Marketing. With offices in the UK and Australia, the practice has developed corporate social networking strategies, social media marketing and social recruiting programmes for a range of private, public and not-for-profit organisations, including VisitBritain, Yell Adworks, The Audit Commission, Fairtrade, Wine Australia, Hays, ANZ Bank, and the NHS.  The practice offers strategy, advisory, research, training and managed services.

We can offer you a two month-internship in July and August where you’ll be thrown into the deep end to work on accounts with our consultants. Your day-to-day tasks will vary but will definitely include the following at some point:

-    Account management (including “whatever needs to be done to service the accounts”)
-    Client training
-    Client research
-    Report writing
-    Proactively participating in social media events

Our ideal intern looks a bit like this:
-    Passionate about social media with an appetite to learn
-    Up to date web 2.0 industry knowledge
-    Exceptional traditional writing and grammatical skills
-    Excellent verbal communication skills with ability to present  complex ideas clearly
-    Attention to detail and outstanding organisation skills
-    Ability to work to tight deadlines and be calm under pressure

We can’t offer you a full salary but will cover your travel and lunch expenses, as well as a discretionary bonus at the end of the internship. We are currently looking at expanding so there is potentially scope for developing this internship into a permanent paid position.

I look forward to hearing from you!

I recently spoke at the British Library on the subject of developing a social media strategy with a focus on social recruiting for the social media in recruitment event

Thanks to those of you who attended the event and participated in the debate afterward.

For those who didn’t I include a copy of the pres below, outlining our 10 x point plan.

It doesn’t mean a great deal without the accompanying commentary, so here is are the key points of nos 1-5.  The rest will follow next week….

1. Are you ready?

In his excellent blog, The CounterIntuitive CEO (a must read for anyone in management) Colony (Forrester CEO) equates social media to sex : i.e. you can read about it as much as you want, but it’s only when you start doing it that you actually get it.

This is sound advice.  Taking it one step further, for us, social media isn’t about having a Facebook fan page or a twitter account; there is way too much tokenism / box ticking right now in this space.  The organisations that are really benefiting from web 2.0/ social utilities are embracing the values that underpin them - transparency, openness, authenticity, conversation. If your organisation isn’t really ready to act in this way, then you’re not really ready.

2. Listening

We’ve written lots of post on this before, and indeed social media monitoring / online reputation management is a key part of the Carve proposition.  We basically used a slide showing 2 ears and 1 mouth as a reminder that it’s critical to listen first. Who is saying what (customers, employees, past employees, potential employees, partners, etc), Where are they saying it (Facebook, forums, blogs, niche communities, etc) and What are they saying? Typically we recommend a full social media audit (about which Jeremiah Owyang blogged recently) if you’re serious about understanding you and your competitors corporate social networking environment.

3. Identify objectives

What do you want to achieve? Get more customers? Get closer to your customers? Give them a better service [think crowd-sourced CRM. If you've no idea what that means look at http://twitter.com/comcastcares then get in contact] In corporate recruitment it might be to attract the top graduates, develop external talent communities for your pipeline;  for recruiters it might mean finding new ways of engaging passive talent,  offering new services to your clients, etc.
Sounds obvious, but without it you’re not building a strategy.

4. Choose your platforms; Decide what you’re going to say

Often your business might want to do everything:  Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Xing,  (Europe’s leading business network if you’re not in the know) YouTube,  a private Ning community… all, you know, like, yesterday.  We advise that (following points 2 and 3) you identify the key platforms for your audiences and make them fly first.

Equally important is - seriously - what the heck are you going to say? There must be a million blogs, twitter accounts, Facebook pages and LinkedIn groups all set up - and all saying nothing. What is going to be your USP? What reason are people going to want to read you / retweet you / quote you / engage you in conversation?
Your organisations thing might be perhaps thought leadership… or the best insight into the market.. or using these tools to encourage peer to peer communities... or to give the deepest insight to the latest jobs… or to help your customers become prosumers and engage in your R&D process… or.. well you get the idea.

A good touch point is the 3C’s - community, content and conversation (as picked up by Recruiter in fact who covered our presentation )

5. Develop a Roadmap, build a team

Having chosen your platform, you need a roadmap for that platform, which a beginning, an end and attendant milestones / KPIs along the way. Here for nothing is a version we’ve developed for LinkedIn from the perspective of  a corporate recruiting environment.

Then build a team.
Do you know the first thing we strive to do when engaged to help an organisation or recruitment firm develop a social media /  corporate social networking strategy? Its to identify an internal champion - someone who really is passionate about dialogue, your customers.  They don’t need to be an expert on Facebook - but they do need to be able to enthuse their co-workers about the whys / wheres / hows of doing this. Secondly, you’ll need someone from your management team involved.   Get corporate comms on board, HR, legal.  And (perhaps) hire yourself a Twinten.

Points 6-10will follow next week. Please find the embedded presentation below.

The FT just published a good article on how brands market themselves on Twitter. The article notably compares how Twitter created a hugely successful viral campaign for KFC’s new grilled chicken, whilst Habitat is still suffering from the backlash to its “#MOUSAVI Join the database for free to win a £1,000 gift card” campaign. To be fair though, the KFC campaign was to get Oprah Winfrey to direct viewers of her show to a web page with a coupon for a free KFC meal. And what happened then? People spread the news furiously on the Twitterverse, bumping KFC to the top trending topic at the time. More than demonstrating KFC’s proficiency in marketing itself on social networks, I think the story here is really about the potential that Twitter - amongst other social networks - shows for brands who utilise the site in the right way.

As Twitter continues its amazing growth, more and more brands are jumping on the ‘Twitter bandwagon’. And whilst it’s all good brands now realise they can’t ignore social networks and have to find a way to work with them, it’s all the more crucial they think long and hard how they’re going to do it. The top down approach: ‘let me evangelise you about my brand’ isn’t working in a web 2.0 environment. If brands don’t start by listening to their customers first and foremost, there is absolutely no way they are going to be able to engage in a conversation the way these customers want to nowadays. Make sense?

We hear more and more about companies hiring ‘twinterns’ - one of these elusive Gen Y that live and breathe social media like no one above the age of 25 can really pretend to. Great step I think, if only for the educational process for c-level managers, as demonstrated by the story of 15-year old Matthew Robson, the Morgan Stanley intern last week. Unfortunately, ‘twinterns’ not managed properly can lead to the Habitat disastrous story.  As Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang tweeted yesterday (@jowyang):

Spoke to a social media strategist at large tech company. Some brands give strategy to interns (native to social) but there are dangers

Interns, while creative, heavy in social, and not ’soiled’ from corporate culture are great at tactics –but may not know business side

I’ve heard from a few brands where energetic bright eyed interns are paired up with slower seasoned executives –to teach each other

Food for thought, surely?