For the first time in over 5 years, Campbell Mithun offered its intern program, but this time the company used a nontraditional platform to evaluate and assess applications to find its interns – social media. Last Friday, the agency, founded in Minneapolis in 1933, announced six young individuals who had been chosen for the competitive internship.
Campbell Mithun used the social media platform Twitter to conduct its search for worthy applicants. The applicants were asked to explain why they wanted one of the six positions, which included account management, creative, media, and technology. The internships last ten weeks and run in the summer time.
The name of the competition was Lucky 13, in honor of Ray Mithun, a Campbell Mithun founder. To represent this, eligible applicants were required to submit 13 tweets over the course of 13 days, from Feb. 13 – 25, 1011.
Applicants tagged each tweet with the hashtag #L13. This made it so that anyone with a Twitter account could find all the comments from anyone at any time. Many people followed the unique competition through following the handle @the_Lucky_13.
425 people registered for the competition and over 300 submitted comments during the course of the Lucky 13 competition. Campbell Mithun put together a committee of 37 employees and called them the “Lucky 13 Response Team.” The team sorted through thousands of comments and found 32 finalists, who they then interviewed face to face or over Skype. The six new interns were then chosen.
Ms. Fischer, Vice President of Campbell Mithun, said, Given “the increasing digital nature of our day-to-day work, we thought it would be appropriate to add a digital component.” The reason is that almost everyone in Generation X&Y use social media. Ms. Fisher went on to say how the quantity and quality of applications exceeded the companies expectations.
One of the most interesting aspects about the competition was that applicants could view their competition. They knew exactly who and what they were up against which led to many applicants “stepping up their game.” Many of the applicants actually used Twitter to tweet each other compliments on their comments.
Mark Manalaysay, a junior at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia is one of the six interns (Pictured Above).
Another selected intern was Genette Sekse, 22. She describes the competition as a much more appealing way to apply to a job, its much more exciting than “writing a cover letter or sending a résumé.”
The four other interns include: Cory Etzkorn, Connor Johnson, Vince Koci, and Natalie Neal. Campbell Mithun plans to offer more internships in the summer of 2012. Ms. Fischer says to stay tuned.
Will applying for jobs soon become more prominent on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter?
