Based on research from 120 or so web strategists from large corporate companies, this research from Altimeter Group has some interesting content, not least the “Maturity level” test, enabling organisations to benchmark their current position.

We’re currently working with pan-European executive recruiter MRL Group on their Corporate Social Networking / Social Recruiting strategy.  As part of this programme, MRL are  recruiting Twinters -  paid social media internships - for their Hove (nr. Brighton) HQ.  Full details below / here , please do share with anyone you feel relevant.

Twinterns (Social Media Internships)

Leading Pan-European Recruitment Group. Immediate Start.

3-12 month contract duration. Hove.

MRL is a dynamic, market leading executive recruitment business, with offices in the UK and Germany. In order to support our investment in an extensive social media programme, we’re currently looking to recruit our first ever “Twinterns” – a 3-12 month internships working closely with our management teams and consultants to support the professional use of LinkedIn, Twitter and other online tools throughout our business.

This is really a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience of social media marketing and corporate networking in an environment where you really will have a vital role to play in the future of our business. You’ll spend your first week being trained by one of London’s leading social media practices, and then you’ll be straight onto the job of helping our consultants develop authentic, engaging conversations with our candidates and customers.

It goes without saying that we’re looking for someone who knows the difference between LinkedIn and Facebook, and is a demonstrably passionate participant in all types of social media. Just as importantly, you’ll be able to impart your enthusiasm to our team, helping them understand the business case for using these tools to build richer, deeper, relationships with our stakeholders.

This is a paid internship, and we are offering 11k per annum, and we’re offering a bonus for truly exceptional performance…

Please apply via kelly.robertson@mrl-group.com

To apply, please forward your CV to and we’ll begin the conversation from there.

We’re looking forward to hearing from you.

LinkedIn Signal should be available for most of you today. If you haven’t already seen it, it allows you to create live, dynamic searches for topics of interest to you - just like a twitter search for #socialmedia will show live conversations around so that topic, so you can now save relevant searches via Signal. This seriously improves the relevance / importance of updates, as - frequent, relevant updates will now put you front of mind to the right audiences. In other applications, candidates for example might save a signal search for a job title. Check out the video below.

Our very own Paul Harrison is putting the finishing touches to his presention for tomorrow’s Social Collective Conference where he will be keynoting on social opportunities for brands in 2011. Paul will be discuss the tools and thinking that will shape how brands and customers use social media in the coming year: from location-based services to crowsourcing in the real world. As usual, Paul will give many interactive examples, and illustrate his points with case studies so attendees get out of the session with a roadmap of actions they can start implementing immediately.

If you haven’t already booked your ticket but want to hear what social media will look like for an enteprise in 2011, here is a another chance to come and join us. And because we’re really nice, we’re giving you a 25% discount code. Book your tickets here and type : essential25 when prompted.

If you can’t get away from your desk, you’ll still be able to follow the day’s proceedings on twitter with the hashtag #SoCol.

This is an enlightening presentation for anyone who is involved in social networking by Paul Adams, a UX researcher from Google.

Probably most relevant for someone who’s daily actions can be fairly consistently tracked on Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter and particularly those who want to keep their personal and professional lives separate online.

And while we are on the topic of social profiles, another great post you might like to check out is about knowing and maintaining your own social footprint effectively from Michelle Prak here.

Here’s a nice graph showing LinkedIn’s  ( the world’s largest professional networking tool ) state today :

http://tinyurl.com/34sjvd6

So, what do we all think of the new website Unvarnished? Described as a cross between LinkedIn and Yelp it allows anonymous reviews of your personal professional reputation.

For those who have decided to keep their ‘personal’ social networking profiles (Facebook, MySpace etc) separate from their professional profiles (LinkedIn, Xing etc) this will make it increasingly hard.

What’s interesting is that anyone can add a profile about themselves or anyone else (you can go in and ‘claim’ your profile if one already exists).

We’ve had quite a bit of debate on this blog in the past about how potential and current employers use Facebook but this throws up so many more issues.

I’d love to know your opinion.

Would you use this to create your own profile?

How would you respond if someone posted something negative about you?

Would you post comments about people you’ve worked with in the past?

Would you use it to research a potential employee?

In a great article from Advertising Age, Kunur Patel looks at the different social media models emerging in the corporate world:

1. Centralised - social media role functions at a senior level as used by Ford

2. Distributed - everyone in the organisation has a role in social media as seen at Best Buy

3. Combination - incorporates centralised best practices and distributed execution as Kodak does.

You can read the full article from the Advertising Age website here.

Carve was asked last year to contribute a chapter to the Social Media in Recruitment guide, following a well received presentation I made on Corporate Social Networking ( where ‘Social Media meets Business’ ) at the British Library.

Our chapter is focused on ‘Developing an Effective Corporate Social Networking Strategy‘ and draws on our experiences of doing just that with organisations inside and outside of the recruitment world.

The result is published by the REC Industry Research Unit and has some thought provoking contributions from the likes of Matt Alder and Bill Boorman

We’ve made the report accessible for free download via this link - socialmediainrecruitment

As always, we’re interested in your feedback / thoughts.

On Thursday and Friday this week I’ll be leading two tracks at TruLondon (http://thetruconferences.com/) that we hope will turn into something pretty special.

We’ve been operating LiveLABS for a while now as part of our active facilitation / corporate social networking programmes, where we use our tools and best practice frameworks to address real social media / social recruiting challenges. But we’re hoping that Tru London will take live problem solving to a new level with – we hope – a cast of 1000s.
Live LABS problem-solving was really borne out of the evident frustration that many people feel when approaching social media, and – specifically – when attending social media  / social recruiting events. There is a lot of theory and a number of well-known social media case studies that tend to be trotted out at these events but they often mean little if you’re not managing a brand that’s not already in possession of bags of money and /or residual awareness.  Live LABS is all about realising the value in social media for your organisation / brand.

When is Live LABS Tru London taking place?

• Thursday, 18th February:  13.00 – 14.00 GMT (Track 6)
• Friday, 19th February 2010: 13.30 – 14.30 ( Track 23)

How do I get involved?
Live LABS Tru London is going to be live in every sense of the word: participants to the Live LABS will be able to both SUBMIT  questions and challenges, or CONTRIBUTE with ideas and solutions.

• During the event, you can submit using “#TruLondon Q [and then your question]” ( you can also email your questions in advance to LiveLABS@CarveConsulting.com paul@carveconsulting.com)  In LiveLABS we attempt to solve problems in context, so please give as much detail as you can.

As the questions flood in (we hope) from you the twitterati and the individual tracks and participants at the event,  we will be showing the questions on the big TwitterJobSearch screen, and of course you can track them via your favorite Twitter tool ( we think http://twitterfall.com/trulondon is a good one, we’ll also be hosting a widget on the Carve Blog).

• And here’s where you come in. To contribute your ideas and solutions, just tweet using “#TruLondon A [and then your ideas ]”

We will be mashing the whole Twitter/Live participation thing up into something we hope that is great fun to participate in, but also:

•    …will provide some crowd-sourced insights to your social media / social recruiting problems and questions
•    ….and bring together – Live -  some of the planet’s leading recruitment thinkers
For more information, and tickets to TruLondon please visit http://thetruconferences.com/

Let’s make it trend on Twitter