Wood Business

Industry News News
FPAC uses social media for recruiting

Aug. 13, 2014 – Forestry may be a traditional industry but recruiting a social media-savvy generation into the workforce has required some new tricks. FPAC came up with a social media contest to spread the news that the industry is looking for a new generation of ideas and energy and the campaign took on an energy of its own.

Challenging students to get creative, the contest required them to apply via Facebook and submit a two-minute YouTube video to describe what would maket hem an ideal Green Dream intern. The candidates then had to get their friends to vote for their application. The videos with the most votes were granted an interview for one of the seven internships available.

The contest went viral with 16,500 cast votes and close to 180,000 page and video views. The winners received a four-month paid internship and an iPad mini to blog about their work experience in forestry. The interns wrote about their life in the forest community, their jobs and skills learned, the education required to make forestry a career.

"These student positions give us the opportunity to experience an industry setting before we graduate from our respective universities. If it wasn't for these opportunities, many of us would graduate with our degrees without any idea of what our career would actually entail," says Robert Silliker, summer 2014 Green Dream Intern chemical engineer at AV Nackawic.

For more about the internship program, go to thegreenestworkforce.ca.

August 13, 2014  By  Amie Silverwood



Print this page

Advertisement

Stories continue below