Lo and behold what did I discover, but a group created by advertising giants Saatchi & Saatchi as part of their recruitment process. And despite having a full-time job, I joined the group to see what the first 'task' would be.
At 10am on January 18 a message was sent out to the group of 6,000 instructing members to set up a Facebook group and attract as many members as possible. The top 50% of the groups would go through to round two.
The number of groups that have appeared since the task was set is reflective of just how logged on the current generation of graduates is. Something in the region of 800 groups cropped up, which not only demonstrates how dire the graduate employment situation is, but also shows how receptive those graduates have been to this novel recruitment method.
My generation live and breathe digital media. Social networking has become an extended version of real life networking. It would be safe to say that any university student without a Facebook account is at a social disadvantage — if only for being missed off the guest list for friends' parties. But because more companies are using Facebook to promote on-campus recruitment events you are also putting yourself out of the loop in terms of career opportunities.
As far as successful recruitment processes go, I take my hat off to Saatchi & Saatchi. They have found a novel method of weeding through the thousands of applications they receive, while setting a truly creative challenge — which made me want to take part even though I wasn't looking for a job.
Something that perhaps Saatchi and Saatchi were not anticipating, however, is the entrepreneurial spirit of one of the applicants to turn her successful group into a start-up website endeavour. 'Secret London' currently tallies at 186,225 members and is a group dedicated to sharing London's secrets among its online community, and was started by Bristol graduate Tiffany Philippou. The group was a literal overnight success, with numbers trebling with each click of the refresh button.
Philippou has used Facebook, for free I'd like to emphasis, to test out her idea and to generate interest and customer loyalty. She has charted her journey of translating the group into a website by blogging about it, enabling her to retain the attention of Secret London's growing fan base. In my opinion this just proves that young people have successfully mastered how to use the latest developments in technology to their advantage; career advantages included. Employers and recruiters should sit up and take notice. And for goodness sake – get on Facebook!
