Click Start Your Career

Precruitment was recently featured in an article in The Cairns Weekend Post’s new CareerOne lift out.

Click Start Your Career 

The Weekend Post, 23 July 2011
Chris Harrison

Finally some good news for parents worried about their children spending too long on Facebook. Rather than wasting time, they could be clicking their way to a career.

With the internet playing an ever-increasing role in people’s lives, more and more businesses are hiring internet-savvy staff to manage their social media presence. Generation Y is finding its virtual feet in the online marketplace. Today’s reclusive teenager could be tomorrow’s internet entrepreneur.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Flickr, Blogspot, Digg are a smorgasbord of online billboards offering every business with an internet connection maximum exposure at minimum cost.

Precruitment senior consultant Leslie Lofthouse said more of her clients were specifying “social media experience” when briefing her on jobs, particularly in roles relating to communications, sales and marketing and administration.

“We recently had a temporary communications officer position which required in-depth knowledge of social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, and how it enables an organisation to connect with a different demographic as well as provide instant information to stakeholders,” she said.

“We are also finding that generally, organisations are delegating these tasks to their ‘Gen Y’ staff where possible, given that they use these social media platforms frequently to connect with their own personal networks.”

Precruitment’s Gen Y consultant Caitlin Williams said it’s all about getting the attention of an online audience who are spending less time engaging with the traditional media outlets of television and print.

“Companies understand that using social media is about getting information out instantly to a different demographic,” she said.

“Generation Y might not be reading newspapers cover to cover like the older generations would, but they’re on Facebook and Twitter every day.”

Jobs in social media are a relatively new phenomenon in Cairns and in Ms Williams’ experience they came about from an unlikely source.

“I think the cyclone and the floods in Brisbane was when social media really took off in terms of sharing things that were happening instantly,” she said.

“I think organisations and companies really saw the value in how quickly they were able to share information.”

Cairns Regional Council recently appointed a social media expert to its public relations team as a means of sending instant messages to a mobile society.

“Social media is an increasingly important and relevant form of communication,” council CEO Lyn Russell said.

“We have made a conscious decision to employ a person with a solid understanding of social media and the role it plays to further develop our online presence.”

For the region’s travel and tourism providers, social media offers the possibility of boasting their brand worldwide while engaging potential customers in “conversation”.

Castaways Resort and Spa general manager Will Neville recently appointed an ecommerce manager to oversee a wide range of roles, including sales and marketing and customer service.

“We put deals out on Twitter and Facebook,” Mr Neville said.

“We constantly load photos. Imagery is very important. And anyone who has comments, we engage.”

“We also interact with other websites. Our Facebook page will post photos on other Facebook pages such as National Geographic, which has 4.5 million followers. Posts there give us click backs. You get an exposure of that image to potentially 4.5 million people.

It delivers us some good results. We target 300,000 exposures a month through Facebook.”

Maximising the use of social media for business will be the topic of discussion at QTalks – a free seminar by Tourism Queensland on August 3. For more information visit the Tourism Queensland website.