Offer and Acceptance

Last Night's Social Media Debate

Despite the erratic weather conditions, it was great to see a few familiar faces at last night’s “Social Media: The Death of Print?” debate.   Drew Benvie, Mick Fealty and Simon Nixon made up the panel and spoke with enthusiasm around the issues of social media and PR.   I finally managed to meet a few people in the flesh that I have been following online for some time, and some new faces like Ben Matthews, who only started blogging a couple of months ago.  With agencies knocking on my door all the time to find social media experts (of which there are few) it’s reassuring to know that PRs are embracing blogging and social media.  Those that really cotton on can carve a real niche for themselves in the market.  Ged Carroll has done a great job of creating a run down of the event which you can read on his blog. 

Social Media; The Death of Print?

Well here I am again advertising something.... it will stop soon... However this may be of interest as it touches on social media and PR, both of which are meant to be featured regularly on this blog.

Unicorn Jobs in conjunction with our sister company, Taylor Bennett, is hosting a round table called, erm, "Social Media; The Death of Print?"  It's on March 10th at the Charlotte Street Hotel.  If you're a Facebook user you can see details here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=8541632674

If you're not a Facebook user how do you ever get invites to anything?  Email me and I'll send you something in plain text.

It should be a hotly debated topic.  If you know bugger all about social media then all the better, we will introduce you to the world of blogs, podcasts and virtual worlds.  (I saw Second Life on a CSI episode the other night.... that may be a whole other post).

Anyway, if you want to come send an email to socialmedia@unicornjobs.com and say you'd like to be there. 

What's more, you get to meet me and have a beer.  What more could you want?

Internship Opportunties With Exciting New Internet Project

GraduateJobsNetwork is a new kind of careers and media company which offers gap-year students and recent graduates a unique way to launch their careers by working on the definitive graduate careers website. We are currently recruiting interns who will work on the programme for 4-8 weeks between now and the end of the year and learn a variety of skills:

Editorial: researching and writing interviews and stories; sub-editing; Apple Mac skills

Web & Design: operating a content management system; search engine optimisation; image processing; desktop publishing skills

Sales & Management: running a media company; brainstorming sales leads; building a sales database

Office Management: managing a company database; chasing payments; keeping accounts

Marketing/PR: writing press releases; making and phoning PR contacts; liaising with student media

This programme would usually cost you £5,000 - however we are currently offering a few FREE internships.

You will not be paid, but will receive a reference when you complete the programme, and will also have careers guidance from Taylor Bennett, a leading headhunting firm, including CV writing, job interview techniques and networking skills. We are based in Shoreditch, on the edge of the City of London and within easy reach of Spitalfields and Hoxton. The office is 10 minutes away from both Liverpool Street and Old Street stations.

To apply, fill in an application form at http://graduatejobsnetwork.com/howtoapply.html and submit it together with your CV as soon as possible.

GraduateJobsNetwork Limited, 221-222 Shoreditch High Street, London E1 6PJ

Telephone 020 7100 9120

E-mail info@graduatejobsnetwork.c

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Job Ad - AEs/AM Financial Services

Account Executive - £18 - 23k
Our client, a leading financial PR agency, is looking to fill two exciting Account Executive positions one in their retail division and one in banking. You must be proactive to take on these roles with experience of the financial services sector (you may have had work experience or an internship in this area) and strong writing skills. Join this growing company and have the opportunity to work on the biggest brands in financial services.  REF:  SS04/5

Account Manager - £28 - £34k
They also need to hire an AM. For this role you may be an SAE looking for that elusive step up the next rung of the career ladder. You will join their banking team and you should have strong financial services experience with sound writing skills and ambitions to lead consultancy teams. REF: SS06

For more information drop us a line on 0203 051 1525 or alex@graduatejobsnetwork.com

Job ad - Head of PR EMEA, b2b Tech

Head of PR EMEA, b2b Tech, £70K+

Our client is looking for a real media doer to head up PR across EMEA. Managing a team of 15 across the region you must have plenty of charisma and be robust enough to hold your own against internal stakeholders. Lots of travel is on offer with this meaty role.

sarah@indigored.biz
01923 466555

CMP Vlogs their jobs!

VlogYourJob has its first customer!  Those clever cats over at Clarke Mulder Purdie have posted an illustrated job ad.  We like it!  Let's hope it's the start of many more to come.

PR Vlogs

Inspired by the Golin Harris vidos of their away days (as mentioned by Alex Pearmain), I had a quick scout around YouTube this morning for other PR vids.  Here's a selection....

Golin Harris

Hill and Knowlton Graduates 2006
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jhPJlIAfRc
(Embedding of this vid is disabled by request apparently!)

Edelman
Recruitment ad

Weber Shandwick
Multicultural communications insights

Burson Marsteller
A minute with Robert Leaf

Fleishman Hillard
FH Away Day

Cohn & Wolfe
Promo Piece

Borkowski
Borkowski Movey

Mark Borkowski Virgin Megastore video blog

Cake
Cake Showreel

Cake - This is what we do

Waggener Edstrom
Lunatic Fringe 2007

The Sunday Times 100 Best Companies

Indigo Red will be moving offices in the next couple of months.  My husband, who works for a removal firm, came with me to the office on Saturday to work out how much the move is going to cost us (his labour is free, but I'm not sure I could pay his work mates in kind). In a minor panic that he will realise my work life is not quite as organised as my home one, I had a bit of a tidy up of my desk on Friday.  Among the old interview notes and endless business cards I found a copy of The Sunday Times 100 best companies to work for, 2007.  It's been lurking there since March as I had intended to blog about it, and somehow had slipped between an old pile of payslips and some HR trade mags.

So anyway, only a mere 5 months late and here I am ready to write about it.

I thumbed through it once more and scanned the list for PR companies.  Only 1 PR agency made the top 100, Hill and Knowlton, who scraped in at number 91.  Scanning through the piece on them there are some things which are unsurprising; the male/female ratio is 36:64 - still a considerably better distribution of the sexes than some agencies, and the average age of an H&Ker is 32.  There is considerable attention given to the free scoff and booze you can get there - free breakfast and free food after quarterly meetings, plus an onsite bar.  However, they score some of the lowest scores in the 100 in terms of work life balance, as nearly half the staff said they felt they spent too much time working.

Still, I wonder what the 88% that said they have fun with their colleagues are up to?

On a slightly different tangent, I also looked for recruitment consultancies.  There are a whopping 14 recruitment companies in the top 100, with Hill McGlynn & Associates topping the list at number 12.  Impressive numbers from the recruitment industry.

As these Best Company rankings are voted for by the employees, it begs the question are recruitment companies better at their own employment PR than the PR experts?

Fullrun's Blogger Roundtable

I went off to the swish Soho Hotel last night as we sponsored Fullrun's Consumer Blogger Roundtable.  The boss is  always up for sticking a bit of money behind a bar. 

The event kicked off with a panel of five, Michael Parsons from CNET, Chris Price and Katie Lee of Shiny Media, Mat Toor of Dennis Publishing and James Rivington from Tech.co.uk, and was hosted by Peter Kirwin of Fullrun.

There was a run down on how each of the sites likes to be pitched to (send an email, don't phone them - especially if it's just a standard pitch, include quotes and unique pictures, use an interesting subject header), followed by a lively discussion on whether there is a difference between bloggers and journos (some of the panel felt bloggers had more principles than journos.... they shall remain nameless) and how the immediacy of blogging requires a good wireless connection and the press releases to be held off until after a press launch.  Don't forget to provide some food at a launch either, Michael Parsons is particularly keen to fill his tummy and stop that free champagne from sloshing around his insides.  His poor liver is suffering.  Of course, that's assuming that you can get a blogger to a launch in the first place - they are self confessed un-socialites. 

"Is blogging dying?" was a question that reared its ugly head once more.  As the panellists work for blog sites, it was unlikely they'd say yes, but there was a general consensus that the blogosphere is platauing (80 million blogs - the vast majority not regularly updated) and as huge amounts of information hit our RSS feeds, as consumers we'll become more selective about what we're reading.

There was lots of nodding and muttering among the delegates when the subject of measurement came up.  "Clients aren't convinced by the audience numbers, or how they're measured" was the cry from the audience.  On the contrary, said the panel, metrics are now easier to measure than ever.  Unique users and page view stats can be made available to PRs and they can be much more reliable than some of the more measurements used by more traditonal media.  Can they be fiddled?  Probably.  Can traditional media stats be fiddled?  Most definitely. 

So off we trotted to the fabulous Swirl Room for drinks, courtesy of Indigo Red, and some light banter.  I bumped into one of my PR agency clients who is "new to this blogging stuff" and asked me to recommend some PR related blogs to have a look at, so off the top of my head came Drew Benvie, Simon Wakeman, Stephen Davies, The PR Monkey, Strumpette and The World's Leading.  Those are the blogs that are obviously stuck in the forefront of my consciousness, so sod what Technorati says, they rank highest in my little world and don't look to be dying any time soon.

Offer and Acceptance

The time has come to change the name of my blog.  "Wedlog" was terribly short sighted, in that I picked the name whilst in the midst of the whirlwind which was planning my wedding and at the time fitted the blog much better than it does now.  I'm now a smug married with a whole two months of marriage under my belt and so felt it was time to pick a name which reflects the content.... and so Offer and Acceptance is born.  As a recruitment centric blog, with a bias towards the PR industry, Offer and Acceptance reflects two of the most important parts of the recruitment process (the parts that earn recruiters their commission!). 

I'm keeping the URL the same for now, just so that I don't break any links elsewhere and can keep a track of the stats.  Right or wrong?  I may change my mind in the future.