recruitment

Too many candidates, chasing too few jobs mean that you have to be just a little bit sleeker than your average to score that prized interview. It's tough out there, I tell you.

If you're churning out the CVs, rapid-fire style, have a read below and see. You could be missing a trick.

Sending a CV online is quick, free and gets your an instant response, even if it's a ping back aknowledgement. Unsuprisingly it's the most common way of applying for a job but at the same time a CV sent by email runs the risk of just festering in an inbox.

Rather than sending your CV as an attachment, paste it into the body of the email. Attachments are often ignored because people are worried about viruses and wasting time downloading documents. With this in mind, stay clear of multi-media CVs. They may make you stand out and prove your technical credentials with their singing, all dancing displays but they're awkward to download, never mind format. 

The US picture may be bleak but are British women really as worse off as women in the States when it comes to social media salaries?

We got in touch with a UK-based social media recruitment company to find out if we really have anything to worry about.

According to Emma McNamara, Managing Director of recruitment firm Propel London, there are just more men applying for the roles at the outset:

"We have experienced more male applicants for the roles, however have not seen any gender preference from clients or differences in salaries offered. I think it really depends on the community involved and the candidates overall experience."

There are a lot of challenges for any company taking on an intern.

From where to advertise the vacancy to the costs involved in hosting and training can all be a drain on company resources.

It's been challenging at Chinwag, so I bent the ear of Dominic Potter, co-founder of Internocracy, a company that helps employers set up and run their internship programmes.

Here's a brief run-down of his top-tips to consider before taking on an intern:

For the debt-riddled graduates flooding the jobs market, an internship is an essential bridge to full-time work and enthusiastic young, relatively cheap, talent has its own rewards for employers. But stay on the right side of the law.

Employment law can be a tricky business and the fallacy that an internship equals free labour could potentially land a company in hot water.

There are a few basic legal rules worth bearing in mind should you wish to offer an internship.

Danvers Baillieu, technology lawyer at Winston & Strawn LLP and Bootlaw founder addressed this very issue at a Bootlaw meetup evening earlier this year:

"The shades of grey apply particularly in relation to the requirements of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 (NMWA 1998)"

Under the National Minimum Wage Act (NMWA 1998), anyone who is a worker, that is a person who is employed by you and no one else, must be paid, the minimum wage and according to the act a worker is defined as:

“an individual who has entered into or works under (or, where the employment has ceased, worked under)" is an employee and must be paid accordingly.

Exemption from the rule are builders, accountants or other types of contractors. The minimum wage for over 22 year olds is £5.73/hour (£229.20/week based on 40hrs) and £4.77/hour (£190.80/wk) for 18-22 year olds.

The Digital Mission companies have arrived in New York and are well into the first day's activities, which kicked off with the Master Class session at Winston & Strawn's offices.

It's amazing to think that a year has passed since the previous Digital Mission to New York, but the view across New York from the Met Life Building brought the memories back. New York is a unique city, with a very distinctive vibe and culture. Doing business here is both challenging and exhilarating.

The panels were a pleasant mix of new and familiar faces, kicking off with the basics of setting up in the US, including dealing with general legal issues, employment law, Intellectual property and tax. You might be a UK business, but US courts can claim jurisdiction over you. The US legal systems operates at a state level, which raises the spectre of 50 different courts reaching their long-arms out to you.

If the latest figures from Forum One Networks' Online Community & Social Media Compensation Survey are to be believed, it's not good news ladies. 

The company's 2009 survey found that the gender pay gap is widening in social media at least. Male respondents to the survey made just over $86,644 (£52,249) while female respondents, in comparison, averaged just $75,624 (£45,702) a difference of almost $9,000. According to the survey women make 87% of what a man in a similar role brings home every month.

This time last year Forum One's 2008 study found that 55% of community managers were women. In 2009 this figure fell to 52%. Even with a slight dip in the number of women in social media's top jobs they still out number men in the sector; something which makes the pay difference strange.

The benefits of having an intern are numerous. It’s not just cheap labour and someone to make the tea.

Many organisations are reaping the rewards that come with an internship and a skilled graduate.

It was a case of unknown territory when Chinwag took on Gregory, our first tech intern. It took time and effort to get him started, but the investment paid off and the work he did was invaluable.

So, in the sprit of this, we’ve created a series of blog posts, from an employer's perspective, that aim to cover everything you need to know about offering an internship.

After video clips of a store employee running riot in corriders, staff rooms and damaging stock were posted on YouTube the ASDA fought back with some damage limitation, social media style.

Clips showed My Ayub, employee of the ASDA Fulwood store, licking and stamping on a raw chicken and putting it back on the shelf for customers to buy, he set off fire alarms and cut other employees clothes.

In retaliation employees from ASDA Fulwood branch posted their responses to his YouTube carnage online. The staff members featured in the comeback video look genuinely upset and called for, 

"the person involved to get what's coming to them."