Irish Man Uses The Power Of Social Media To Get A Job

Working in the marketing field there is constant pressure to ‘think outside the box’ and to continuously come up with new and different campaign ideas – but how about applying that creativity to searching for a job in the first place?

Féilim Mac An Iomaire, an Irish man from Galway, has done just that.  Féilim has rented a billboard on one of Dublin’s busy commuter roads for his poster plea ‘Save Me From Emigration’. The billboard shows Féilim with suitcase in hand looking across the water to famous landmarks from the skylines of Toronto, London, Sydney and New York.

Féilim has been searching, unsuccessfully, for a job since returning from Australia last August. Despite having a B.Comm from NUI Galway, Féilim, like many others in Ireland at the moment, has had no success in getting a job even though he has applied for well over a 100 positions in the last 10 months.

Féilim has said that he has felt the traditional ‘cover letter and cv’ method of applying for jobs doesn’t allow an applicant to show their creativity, and has decided to embark on this last ditch effort before throwing in the towel and emigrating to greener pastures.

In addition to the billboard, which also has the contact address joblesspaddy@gmail.com, Féilim has set up a Facebook page and Twitter account. He already has 1,703 people following him on Facebook and countless messages of support are pouring in.

Féilim’s innovative idea has caught people’s attention and he has already spoken on a number of Irish radio programmes, as well as on the national evening news.

This combination of coverage along with his obvious natural creativity will undoubtedly open doors for him. Who wouldn’t want someone showing this kind of initiative on their team? Aside from that, whoever hires him is guaranteed a lot of free publicity!

Good luck Féilim.

UPDATE: Féilim lands a job with Paddy Power.

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Social Media: Definitely NOT A Fad

We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it” – Erik Qualman

Most people have now accepted that social media has become a part of daily life and integral to how we communicate both socially, and for business.

However it’s always good to get a quick reminder of the facts.

The below video might be a year old (and missing references to, most notably, Twitter – which has grown exponentially in the last 12 months) but it’s still relevant, and still full of compelling reasons as to why we need to be engaged online.

Facts From The Video

Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30.

Social Media

• 96% of millennials have joined a social network.
• Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the US.
• Social media has overtaken pornography as the #1 activity on the web.
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the US met via social media.
• Years to reach 50 million users:
• Radio – 38 years
• TV – 13 years
• Internet – 4 years
• iPod – 3 years
• Yet
• Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year.
• iPod application downloads hit 1 billion in 9 months.
• If Facebook were a country it would be the 3rd largest (behind China and India) – yet QQ & Renren dominate China.
• A US department of education study revealed that online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction.
• 80% of companies use Social Media for recruitment;
• 95% of these are using Linkedin
• Fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year old females.
• Ashton Kutcher & Britney Spears have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of:
• Sweden;
• Israel;
• Switzerland;
• Ireland;
• Norway; and
• Panama.
• 50% of the mobile internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook.
• Generation Y & Z consider email passé;
• Some universities have stopped distribution email accounts and are instead distributing eReaders / iPads / Tablets.

YouTube

• YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world.
• While you watch the video 100+ hours of video will have been uploaded to YouTube.

Wikipedia

• Wiki is the Hawaiian word for quick.
• Wikipedia has over 15 million articles.
• Studies show it is as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica.
• 78% of the articles are non-English.
• If you were paid $1 for every article posted on Wikipedia you would earn $1,712.32 per hour.

Blogs

• There are over 200 million blogs.
• 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.
• 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands.

Advertising

• People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services, than how Google ranks them.
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations;
• Only 14% trust advertisements.
• Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI;
• 90% of people skip TV ads using Tivo / DVR

Publishing

• Kindle ebooks outsold paper books Christmas 2009.
• 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation.
• 60 million status updates happen on Facebook daily.

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