So, I have a little brother and sister who are twins and are in university at the moment. Gavin and Louise are their names, they are the babies of our family and although I may be biased, they are pretty great.
They are looking for a paid internship to start in September for a year and are finding it pretty tough to get one. Lou studies marketing and Gavin studies engineering. It's looking like they may have to go to plan B and volunteer for a few days a week at a company and continue to work in their part time jobs to keep them going.
It's pretty critical they get experience in the workplace if they are to stand a chance of getting a job when they graduate. And you know, I don't think its a bad thing to volunteer in exchange for really useful experience, especially in the current economic climate.
Last week I read that Pizza Hut have advertised a position for a Twintern in the USA.
'..According to the company’s site, the position will include sharing insights and experiences via social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, attending marketing meetings, ad shoots and other events, monitoring social media for happenings that may be of interest to loyal Pizza Hut fan, working on PR programs.'....
This sounds like the ideal job for 'digital natives' like the twins - especially for Louise, who studies marketing. So, fingers crossed Louise can get some experience by offering her services in a social media monitoring and response mechanism capacity. Fantastic for her in terms of gaining vital experience and great for the prospective company, in terms of a much need social media resource.
Of course there are a stack of tools that facilitate social media monitoring and response (certainly a considered strategy with content creation and distribution in social media is critical for our clients). However often one of the concerns of companies is the internal resource required to manage a social media strategy.
Does the precarious economic and job situation that students find themselves in, offer companies access to a willing pool of digital savvy resource? Will students and graduates provide the necessary skills and time to execute a considered social media strategy for companies?
They just might.
Sinead
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