For the past year and a half, Page One’s social media team has been rapidly expanding.  While this translates into a lot of great new business opportunities, it also means we’ve been doing a lot of hiring.  A common question I run into every time we start a new round is “what am I actually looking for?”.  What does the ideal social media candidate look like?  After thousands of resumes and interviews, here are the top 5 traits I look for when adding someone to my team:

1. Driven.  The social media world is at the height of “start-up mode” right now, which means although there is some process coming together it’s still pretty much crazy and chaotic.  I hate to be so dramatic, but really only the strong and scrappy will survive.
2. Ability to go with the flow.  In the morning you’re running Cisco’s Twitter feed, in the afternoon you’re developing a video script for VMware, tomorrow you’re coming up with a Facebook campaign for SAP…who knows what tomorrow evening holds in store.   The ability to go with the flow and take on any challenge with a positive attitude will get you far.
3. Brilliant.  No, not just your average smart cookie, we’re talking brilliant.  You have to be able to take those smarts one step further though – it’s the ability to translate brilliance into innovative, cutting edge campaign ideas that will help the team in the long run.
4. Organized.  At the end of the day, it’s all about metrics and ROI and if you can’t keep an organized excel sheet or Google Doc, you will get left behind (and probably frustrate your manager and the client).
5. Ability to deal with uncomfortable situations.  The Twitter feed got suspended.  The client smiled and nodded when you said quality is more important than quantity, but they still want 10,000 Twitter followers by tomorrow morning.  It’s the night before the big pitch and your managers are still arguing over what angle to take.  You get the point.  Being able to trouble shoot, not give up and frankly have the “I need to fight to live another day” attitude helps.

Social media is by no means a perfect science, making hiring for a social media position even more tricky, but have faith hiring managers!  I’ve tested these criteria over the past year and have found some extraordinary and very talented team members.

We’re looking to add strong PR folk to our team in San Francisco. Take a look at the job description and let us know if you’re a fit!

Page One PR is a Silicon Valley public relations and social media firm that specializes in enterprise technology. At Page One we’re corporate, but collaborative and laid-back. People at Page One come from all walks of life. We like that mix and we look for initiative, intelligence, humor, integrity, creativity, risk taking, fearlessness, management skills and a track record of success.

We are looking for a creative, clever, and highly motivated individual who makes the most of every opportunity and wants to make a big splash. We want someone who can get results both independently and as part of a larger team. Every day is different, but the position will mostly include:

Job Duties:
* Develop relationships with media, bloggers, industry analysts
* Craft and place stories in the press and blogosphere
* Write both punchy blogs and traditional press releases
* Manage Twitter accounts
* Research industry events and opportunities

Job Requirements:
* 1-3 years experience in marketing, public relations, advertising or related communications field;
* At least if 1 year of high tech PR agency experience preferred;
* Successful track record of producing strong results;
* Ability to think outside of the box;
* Takes initiative;
* Ability to work both independently and cross-functionally across multiple teams and job duties;
* Grasp complex technology;
* Exceptional organization, writing and verbal communication skills;
* Four-year degree from a top university.

Since Page One’s culture is all about great people doing great things, we reward our employees with exceptional pay, matching 401K and 20 days of paid time off.

* 20 days of PTO (even in your first year)
* 12 paid company holidays
* Medical, dental and vision coverage for you and your dependents
* Matching 401K (after 6 months)
* Long- and short-term disability insurance
* Life insurance
* Flexible spending account

This position is based in the San Francisco office, which is located in the financial district. If you are interested in the position, email your resume and a cover letter to p1job at pageonepr dot com.  Please include details on your experience and explain how you would be a good addition to the team.

Learn more about us: http://www.pageonepr.com. Follow us on Twitter: @pageonepr and Facebook: /pageonepr.

More and more headhunters and companies are tapping social media channels to recruit jobseekers. Especially in a recession, companies know their ultimate success depends on the quality of human capital they can reel into their organization. Leveraging social media plays an increasingly key role in making sure your company finds its widest array of candidate choices.

In recent recruiting cycles, Page One got overwhelming positive responses to an open position at the firm when we ran a 7-week recruitment campaign FOR FREE.  Here are our top five tips on how to find the best of the best on a budget of zero.

1. Start with the usual suspects.

Candidates have been given the secrets to pass the social media recruitment test. Since recruiters tend to check an applicant’s personal blog, Facebook profile, Twitter feed, LinkedIn recommendations, Flickr portfolio, SlideShare presentations or even YouTube resume, establish the same transparency for your company with these tools. Creating your firm’s online character attracts the best pool of applicants and indicates to potentials how they stack up to your ideals, culture and caliber.

To keep costs down, companies should start by posting their own creative job description on a company site or blog and then use email, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to pass around the URL. Nine times out of 10, the best candidates are already in your employees’ networks.

2. Avoid CraigsList, Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs and other major database sites for one of two reasons.

If you’re looking to fill a professional position these sites do not filter resumes enough to make the search worth the time. “Employers” on these sites are often temp or placement agencies or even spammers — not actual employers — and good applicants know this.  As a real employer, know that talent is available in excess, but your ideal applicants generally try to target their job search by looking at sites catered to their specific industry and skill set. They’re not spending much time on the large database sites.

Second, the cost of posting jobs on these sites can grow very quickly based on the number of people you’re looking to hire. If you’re a small firm, there’s no reason to pay hundreds to thousands of dollars to recruit a few people. If you’re a large organization, your own infrastructure is more suitable for recruiting internally on your own site. Google does this especially well.

3. Recognize that paying for recruitment services is almost always a poor decision.

In recruitment, your fixed costs of recruiter salary is a given, so your end goal should be to eliminate all other variable costs like job posting fees. Again, big sites are not the way to go.

CareerBuilder starts at $419 to post for one month for one job position. A bevy of emails and socially networked messages might not get you as many responses in volume, but rest assured candidates who do respond will on average be more qualified, know more about your specific company and industry, and will possess more genuine interest in being an asset to your firm. In this game Quality: 1, Quantity: 0.

The exception to this rule is niche recruitment. From healthcare to tech, smaller job sites are generally cheaper and viewed by a more industry-savvy audience, so bets are if you’re going open the purse strings, smaller sites are a smarter move in your recruitment strategy. Mashable, for instance, offers a gamut of social media positions. For recruiters using Mashable, the $50 price tag is justified by the hours your HR manager won’t have to spend combing through unqualified candidates who‘ve been spamming their resumes around.

4. Use Smart Tools

Doostang is a smart tool.

Back in 2005, Doostang was created by Mareza Larizadeh as an online career advancement website that connects elite professionals with top jobs. The platform is designed like a social network, which makes leveraging connections easier, but the biggest pull for recruiters is that Doostang is free. We’re talking no fees to post jobs. And since Doostang was started with affiliations to Stanford, Harvard and MIT, many of the applicants on the site come from top-notch university networks.

Just this week, Larizadeh told me their level of “executive recruitment pushes the company out ahead of its competitors.” By my calculations, it’s a winner when it comes to keeping recruitment expenses to a minimum.

5. Use Tools with an Edge

SnapTalent is a tool with an edge.

SnapTalent is a recruitment platform that uses social media to profile and match employers to potential hires.  I give them five stars for creating an interface that comprehensively (and easily) profiles companies all for the low price of $0. Jamie Quint, SnapTalent COO, spoke to me about the company’s vision: “We let companies build rich media recruitment pages that tell the full story of their company in a way the ‘connected’ generation understands.”

With the SnapTalent interface, posting information about your company, your employees, your corporate blog and your YouTube video of the office Christmas party happens all in one place. This approach gives candidates the best sense of who your company is and who might fit in with you. Since its start in late 2007, SnapTalent has adopted a tiered pricing plan (like LinkedIn) that’s based on the number of successful contacts it makes for you, but even if you don’t purchase resumes, you still get all the same exposure for a price that can’t be beat.

If you have some great tips and tools to suggest that worked in your hiring, send me a note or comment below!

So, maybe you found out the spoilers to LOST Season 3 on Facebook. Maybe you got your Grand Theft Auto 4 trade secrets from a blog. Maybe you heard John Mayer and Jennifer Aniston broke up for the 11th time on Twitter. Perhaps you didn’t know that an entire prison of convicts in the Philippines could remake the entire Thriller video until you saw it up on YouTube.

Well, whatever you heard, be it entertainment or news, these are the ways information is being delivered today. This is social media. This is Page One.

We are a Silicon Valley public relations firm that caters to the high-tech industry and we are currently looking to add consultants to our Social Media Division in the San Francisco office.

WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR:

Page One is looking for brilliant, enthusiastic and highly motivated individuals who want an opportunity to impact real companies’ business decisions with social media.

Social media is fresh and constantly shifting, so we don’t expect you to be a social media guru. NO PREVIOUS PR or SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERIENCE IS NECESSARY, but if you’ve got some, we won’t complain. If you understand what social media is and can see yourself leading smart PR projects and creating never-done-before campaigns for clients, you could be who we are looking for.

WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR:

Ask yourself if you like who we are. It’s as important.

We are 100% about our people: over-achievers who get the job done better than anyone else and have fun.

As a new Consultant/PageWonder, you’ll learn from the best: our Sr. PR people have reported for the Los Angles Times, managed campaigns for Microsoft, placed cover stories in Business Week, taught graduate journalism at UC Berkeley, written keynote for Bill Gates and even created the first ISP in Japan.

We’re corporate, but collaborative and laid-back. People at Page One come from all walks of life. We like that mix and we look for initiative, intelligence, humor, integrity, creativity, risk taking, fearlessness, writing skill and a track record of success.

When it comes to work/life balance, we don’t just work. We are marathoners, lacrosse players, salsa dancers, avid travelers and more, and Page One gives us the time to do what we love. Sure, you might find a Page One consultant at MacWorld stalking Steve Jobs, but 9 times out of 10, you’ll see a group of us enjoying happy hour in downtown SF.

WHAT YOU’LL BE DOING:

No coffee fetching. No press release copying. We don’t look for gutsy people just to take up space.

Page One’s Social Media Consultants design and produce social media content including video campaigns, blogs and social network profiles for clients. They also produce social media for Page One’s internal marketing. Every PageWonder actively engages in developing clients’ PR, marketing and brand management strategies. We specialize in company launches, product launches, media relations, messaging and positioning, analyst relations and (of course) social media.

WHAT YOU’LL BE GETTING:

Benefits? Want 20 days off? OK.

Since Page One’s culture is all about great people doing great things, we reward our employees with exceptional pay, quarterly bonuses, matching 401K and 20 days of paid time off from your first day on the job.

• 20 PTO days (even in your first year!)
• 11 paid company holidays
• Medical, dental and vision coverage for you and your dependants
• Matching 401K
• Long- and short-term disability insurance
• Life insurance (twice your annual salary)
• Flexible spending account
• Costco delivers the snack food on the first of every month

If you are interested in a career as a Social Media Consultant at Page One, email a resume and a note telling us about yourself to Jasmine Teer at jasmine@pageonepr.com.

Visit us: http://www.pageonepr.com
Read our blog: http://www.pageonepr.com/blogs/thepagewonders/
Check out our Facebook group: Page One PR
Follow us on Twitter: @pageonepr

Yes, the rumors are true! The Page One Social Media Team is looking to hire a new member to join our expanding team. I have posted a very detailed job description below. It is fairly long, but because so many social media jobs are ill-defined I thought it was best to be very descriptive about who I am looking to hire and what type of work this person will be doing.

Please send resumes to socialmediajobs [at] pageonepr.com.

Want to put your social media skills to the test in public relations, marketing, and the high-tech industry?

I lead the Page One Social Media Program at Page One PR, an international public relations firm that caters to the high-tech industry. The Page One Social Media Team has experienced rapid growth in the past year and we’re now looking to hire a full-time social media specialist to join the team in our San Francisco office. Since the new member of the team will report directly to me, I’ll start off by telling you a bit about myself.

I joined Page One PR two years ago and soon after, founded our Social Media Program. I have a strong passion for crafting innovative strategies to communicate corporate messages and have developed an even stronger passion for social media as the right tool to do this. I live and breathe social media, because I believe, 100%, that social media is the future of the PR industry and if companies do not move quickly to adapt these new techniques, they will go the way of the dodo bird, just like the printing press and now the newspaper. Many people are sitting back wondering what is going to happen to PR in the next few years. I am not one of those people. I am that person running up ahead, trying to help define the solution and pave the path. I feel strongly that there is a right way and a wrong way to do this though. It’s all about metrics and measurement and connecting social media programs to real business objectives. Without having well defined, well thought-out goals and the ability to clearly track and monitor progress and results, social media campaigns are often just a waste of time and money. I really enjoy my job because Page One has allowed me the opportunity to grow and expand a program that has the potential to radically shake things up. I have spent the past year learning, experimenting, observing other PR agencies and developing our social media program and have created a process and set of services that will differentiate Page One PR and put us at the cutting edge of social media. Our results already speak volumes on this. Now I just need to build out the team!

So who are we looking for?

Page One’s Social Media Team has developed a unique, metrics driven process focused on generating great results for our great clients. We are looking for a smart, enthusiastic, highly motivated and driven individual that is looking for the opportunity to help high-tech clients integrate social media techniques into their communications strategy. We are ideally looking for an individual who is already actively engaged in a broad range of social media activities (blogging, social networking, community development, monitoring and response, etc.), has the ability to think creatively and develop strategic solutions, and wants to jump in and get their hands dirty to create and run successful social media campaigns.

Our new team member will have:

• 2-3 years PR experience that includes PR agency or corporate experience working with technology companies;
• Experience running social media campaigns and a strong background in social media techniques and strategy;
• Creative outlook and willingness to think outside the box to find solutions;
• Outstanding writing skills and verbal communications skills;
• Willingness to experiment and ability to deal with uncertainty;
• Ability to contribute individually, and lead, manage or participate in cross-functional teams;
• A team player with the ability to create great working relationships on all levels in the company and with clients;
• Four-year university degree.

What will you be doing on the Page One Social Media Team?

This position, while a lot of fun, will also involve a lot of hard work. We are looking for someone ready to take on the challenge! By joining the Page One Social Media Team you will have the opportunity to work closely with me to help define and shape the structure of Page One’s Social Media Program, work with top-notch clients, come up with crazy campaign ideas and actually receive the support and materials to implement them.

Okay, so what are some of the activities you may be asked to do?

• Develop messaging and positioning for complex high-technology products, many of them in the B2B space;
• Respond independently to engineers, business executives and media about complex business and technology issues;
• Develop strategies to package messages that leverage media and social media trends;
• Develop strategies to enable content to be distributed online through viral word-of-mouth channels;
• Detailed analysis of metrics to track the popularity and viral distribution of specific content;
• Produce graphs and charts of media metrics;
• Independent writing of both short and long content on complex topics. Content must be engaging and able to capture enough attention that a reader will naturally pass the content on to their friend;
• Discuss plans and concepts with both mid-level and executive-level clients in meetings and in face-to-face presentations. Instill confidence in clients that you can get the job done;
• Sell concepts and plans internally and to clients to drive consensus;
• Build Twitter following on corporate channels and develop strategies for content to go viral with retweets, hashtag, and bit.ly use;
• Manage video projects for YouTube and Vimeo, including videos directed and produced by Page One and videos created by the community;
• Manage Facebook and LinkedIn campaigns, including campaign strategy creation;
• Develop and manage blog promotion strategy, including management of content from multiple people that are slow in providing content;
• Establish communication with clients even when they appear to be too busy to respond;
• Have fun and spread the awesome potential of social media throughout Page One, the entire Silicon Valley region, and the rest of the world.

Benefits. The good stuff. Want 20 days off? OK.

Since Page One’s culture is all about great people doing great things, we reward our employees with exceptional pay, matching 401K and 20 days of paid time off per year.

• 20 PTO days (even in your first year!)
• 11 paid company holidays
• Medical, dental and vision coverage for you and your dependants
• Matching 401K
• Long- and short-term disability insurance
• Life insurance (twice your annual salary)
• Flexible spending account

The salary range for this position is up to $60,000.

If you are interested in applying to join the Page One Social Media Team, please send a resume and a note telling us about yourself to: socialmediajobs [at] pageonepr.com.

Learn more about us on: Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook.