The findings come from from the Social Media Audit conducted by recruitment and marketing communications provider Penna Barkers.

However, the research also shows that just 5% have a clear policy on whether information accessed via such online sites can be used in selection processes.

Phill Lane, head of planning at Penna Barkers, says: “Social media is a hot topic in graduate recruitment and a substantial proportion (44%) of graduate recruiters has some kind of Facebook presence. But very few organisations have yet created a coherent social media strategy that deals effectively with the considerable potential for overlap between student, recruiter and line management use of the same platforms.”

At the moment, employers are allowed to force staff to retire at the age of 65 without having to give a reason.

Andrew Groves, head of national resourcing at Yell, welcomed the change, telling Recruiter that the change could potentially help employers redress skills shortages.

However, he said that for this to happen employers would need to change their attitude first. “It will be tough for employers to overcome [their attitude], as for many their instinct is that younger people are faster paced and more aggressive about where they want to get to.”

Rachel Krys, campaign director of the Employers Forum on Age (EFA), says: “The EFA works with many companies who have removed the mandatory retirement age such as B&Q, Nationwide, JD Wetherspoon, BT, The Co-operative and M&S to name but a few; and they are already reaping the benefits. Age is not a proxy for ability.”

Chris Ball, chief executive of The Age and Employment Network (TAEN), adds: “This move can only be a first step. Many employers will need to adopt a totally new mindset… It will certainly mean providing opportunities to train or re-train and to work more flexibly and, crucially, actually recruiting people in their 50s and 60s where they may not have done so in the past.”

Welcoming the plans, TUC general secretary Brendan Barber says: “This is a welcome move. It cannot be right that workers lose their protection against arbitrary dismissal overnight because of their age.

“But we need to go further to give people real choice about how and when they retire with new rights for flexible working. This can end the retirement cliff-edge where people work full-time one day and stop work the next. Many would prefer a phased retirement.

“Not everyone wants to work longer and may not be fit enough to continue. Today’s move should be about choice, not an expectation that people will work longer so don’t need decent pensions.”

Employment relations minister, Ed Davey, said: “Older workers bring with them a wealth of talent and experience as employees and entrepreneurs. They have a vital contribution to make to our economic recovery and long-term prosperity.”

The CBI has said the move will create uncertainty.

Work experience is critical to standing out in the crowds, according to a survey by Vodafone.

The survey shows that 69% use work experience to help their job applications, while 34% take up volunteering to enhance their CV and increase their chances of a getting a job.

Almost half (45%) of students say the marketplace is becoming even more crowded, citing the huge growth in graduates is the main obstacle to getting a foot on the career ladder.

“Volunteering and work experience have become critical assets which young people today can use to enhance their attraction to employers,” said Vodafone UK graduate manager, Nicola Fitzgerald.

“Over 3,000 people applied for our 2010 graduate programme which offered 50 places. It was those people who communicated how their life experiences and personal interests added value to their academic successes who shone through both in their CVs and interviews.”

As part of his Emergency Budget speech, George Osborne announced plans for the government to consult on how to scrap the default retirement age from April 2011.

Jo Broadbent, senior lawyer at Hogan Lovells, says that scrapping the default retirement age should be “on the radar” of both in-house and external recruiters and added: “They shouldn’t ‘park’ the issue.”

She suggested two ways companies could deal with its removal: “The first thing they could do is just accept that they have to operate without a default retirement age; the second is that companies could impose their own retirement age, but that could be difficult from a legal point of view.”

Campaign group the Employers’ Forum on Age agreed that it should now become an issue for employers: “The default retirement age is fundamentally discriminatory, based on the assumption that age affects someone’s ability to do their job.

“The Employers Forum on Age (EFA) has been campaigning against the default retirement age for many years and works with a number of employers, including many government departments, which report that operating without the default retirement age has resulted in significant business benefits.

“Employers who are currently using the DRA should start planning now to ensure they are ready for this change. Understanding the experience of employers operating without a DRA will be essential, and will give them confidence to allow employees to choose when they retire and to put the policies and processes in place to make the most of an age diverse workforce.”

The benefits of working for as long as one wants to are more than that of carrying on earning! It is a human desire to be with others in the ‘beehive’ of work, where the employee feels part of a collective contribution to the economy, country, world and it is becoming an accepted fact that good health, both physical and mental, come from a human being fully engaged in work.

The mandatory retirement age that many companies adopt of 65, should be scrapped and companies should look at B & Q & Tesco, who have a diverse age-group of employees, where the wisdom of experience, coupled with the bravery of youthful inexperience, is a strong, successful force. The mantra should surely be, “not work ‘til you drop, but choose when to stop”.

Sarah Johnson - Dylan

With CIPD research showing that over a third (37%) of internships are currently unpaid, a policy paper entitled Internships: To Pay or not To Pay? proposes that all interns are paid a guaranteed minimum wage.

It argues that a new ‘training wage’ would help reflect the contribution that an intern is likely to make to an organisation, as well as promote social mobility through encouraging people from poorer backgrounds to apply.

The proposed training wage of £2.50 an hour - which is the current minimum rate of pay for apprentices - would be introduced under the plans, to cover all interns and apprentices regardless of their occupation or industry sector.

Any position that is advertised as an internship would automatically trigger a legal obligation on the part of the employer to pay at least the training wage throughout the entire duration of the internship.

Tom Richmond, skills adviser at the CIPD, says: “The continued existence of a major loophole in the national minimum wage legislation has created a lot of confusion and concern around the issue of whether interns should be paid or not. We believe that the introduction of this training wage would reflect the contribution that interns make to their organisations.”

Among the savings to be announced are nearly £2bn from IT programmes, suppliers and property and over £1bn from the reduction in consultancy and travel costs.

With the threat of 300,000 people losing their jobs, can those who have been loyal to the Public Sector make the transition into the private sector?

Let’s look at Marketing (as hopefully we know something about this). Can a seasoned Public Sector Marketer break into the private sector? The honest answer is it’s going to be tough. In agency land, public sector accounts will be lost, stripped or reduced. This will mean more competition per role.

So how can you combat this? Well play to that strength. If an agency is nervous about losing an account, bringing someone in, with exposure to the Public sector could help strengthen the case. As a candidate I would advise mapping out agencies with Public Sector accounts (Golly Slater, BlueFrog, The Good Agency) and going to them with this proposition in mind. Show then how you can strengthen their case to retain an account. If you have the inner knowledge, you can be worth your weight in gold.

If you don’t know what agencies you work with, find out and then approach them first. Be proactive! You are always going to be up against someone who has worked at a similar agency - the safe bet. You need to prove why a fresh set of eyes and inside working knowledge is better than the safe bet.

‘It seems that we are in tune with the US on this one. The UK Government and many of the workforce wants to let people work for later on in their lives. This makes real sense - all that knowledge is passed on and it’s a fact that working keeps people healthier both mentally and physically and gives them a sense of being part of the community and a feeling that they are contributing to society. Roll on the day when there is no retirement age at all, but merely not work ‘til you drop, but choose when to stop!’ Sarah Johnson, Divisional Director, Dylan* London.

‘With Britain’s traditional economy still languishing, a new generation of business heroes is emerging to lead in the rebuilding of the UK economy. We reveal our future FTSE leaders’.

Can be found at this link http://bit.ly/dnuv91

Follow Julian on http://twitter.com/julianjohnson

Wherever there is change, it is almost an immutable law there will be winners and losers. Recruiters are no stranger to the threat posed by change. In the past many so-called experts predicted that job boards would be the death knell of traditional agencies. Today, of course, staffing companies are massive job board users.

Few people now believe that job boards will be the death of agencies, but could the seemingly inexorable rise of social media sites be the next potential wrecking ball not just for agencies, but for job boards themselves? This was a key question discussed at a meeting of the Recruitment Society held in Birmingham last week.

On the face of it, easy access to millions of candidates makes it much easier for companies to identify and then to recruit staff themselves. LinkedIn, which already has 63m members worldwide and aims to have up to 500m, has become an essential tool of many in-house recruiters. Many companies now have their own Facebook page, while MySpace and Twitter also have their fair share of supporters.

As Jon Hull, resourcing manager at RS Components, one of the panel members at the Recruitment Society meeting said: “If you want to find an accountant in Liverpool with 10 years’ experience, you can. And what’s more,” added Hull, “you know that by talking to them directly you will probably get 15-20 others too.”

Geoff Newman, chief executive of Recruitment Genius, a company that posts vacancies on up to 60 job boards simultaneously, said that far from representing a threat to agencies, networking sites were an opportunity for them “to make an absolute fortune”. Agencies should revel in the social media age by adopting a consultancy type of role, he suggested. “Agencies can make a lot of money by helping clients who don’t understand social media,” said Newman, who is also managing director of Kent-based recruitment agency Acorn Recruitment.

For example, where agencies could potentially add value was in advising clients on the cultural nuances of social networking. Whereas it was acceptable for hirers to use Facebook to contact users about jobs in the US because the distinction between the social and the professional was blurred, this was unlikely to work in the UK where the distinction between the two was clearer.

“It is better to use Facebook to build communities and trust, so that potential jobseekers have the knowledge to make a positive decision, ” said Jon Porter, managing director UK and Ireland, TMP Worldwide.

However, Tom Marsden, director of professional services at Alexander Mann Solutions, said there was no point in fighting the trend towards social networking. Job boards and agencies have limited amount of space to manoeuvre. He suggested their only choice was to compete either on cost or by becoming more specialist.

“Specialisation is going to become increasingly important in the agency and job board market,” he said.

Porter argued that agencies still had a place, but again, only if they added value. “It’s about agencies who understand the market. We only want to engage people who understand the market and can add expertise,” he said.

Jerry Collier, an RPO expert who has worked at Kenexa and AMS, said that hiring mangers could be the losers. He said that hiring mangers often didn’t take a sufficiently “scientific approach” with very few evaluating and measuring the effectiveness of different channels.

He cited one example where a hirers had hired one candidates from 350 applicants at a cost of £70. On the face of it that was good, but it didn’t take account of “the phenomenal amount of time and effort” involved in dealing with that number of applications.

Chris O’Brien, from online recruitment communications agency Enhance Media’s social media division, suggested that job boards faced a significant threat from social media. He said that according to research, 55% of online jobseekers in the UK used social networking in the first week of their job search. “Job boards are going to have a big challenge,” he said.

While the rise and rise of social sites makes potential recruiters of us all, the jury is still out on whether this necessarily means the death knell of recruitment agencies or job boards. As Marsden said: “It’s about hiring the right people for the right job not the number of clicks or traffic. You have to follow the whole process through the whole recruitment life cycle and convert it not only into the number of people you hire but also their effectiveness.”

It’s about hiring the right people for the right job not the number of clicks or traffic.

Collier added: “Sometimes we forget that recruitment is all about relationships.”

While social media will undoubtedly play an increasing role in recruitment over the next few years, those who embrace change but adhere to these two fundamental principles are likely to continue to have a place at the table.

Key facts
LinkedIn 63m users worldwide, growing at 3m per month. Aims to have 350-500m users
Facebook More than 400m users worldwide
Twitter 50m people Tweet every day
According to Enhance Media, 55% of online jobseekers use social media in the first week of their job search

However, it’s never too late to get started, and begin harnessing the added firepower that digital activation can deliver for your events happening in the real world, in real time.While there are a myriad of digital channels for you to consider, we believe Twitter is the single-most effective and dynamic social media engine for promoting events and generating consumer dialog around experiential marketing campaigns. One of our favorite examples of using Twitter for a consumer experiential program is the Taco Bell Truck (Link), which shares info on where it will be traveling to give out free tacos, fun trivia and news about all things tacos.

Here are some basic steps on how you can use Twitter to take your experiential marketing campaigns to the next level:

Drive the Conversation - Set up a Twitter account and commit to a regular stream of tweets (posts) about your program, and generate a simple hashtag (#) that you include on every post. Make sure to add value for your followers by providing them with interesting info about your brand and relevant offers, and encourage feedback. For larger experiential campaigns, we recommend setting up a Twitter stream that is specific to your program and separate from any general brand or company Twitter stream you may have in place. This allows followers to self-select to specifically follow updates on your events - and you can still promote this separate stream by selectively re-tweeting your posts within your other brand accounts.

We’re currently utilizing this tactic for our client Coca-Cola via the @WorldCupTrophy Twitter feed, which is being utilized to start conversations with soccer fans around the world and generate excitement about the Coca-Cola-sponsored World Cup Trophy Tour event in Houston in May.

Follow Too – Brands that just broadcast one-way information fail in effectively deploying Twitter, so be sure to listen to your followers and take time to monitor what they are tweeting about. In addition, search on your brand and other relevant terms to find conversations from users who might be interested to attend your events and follow your info. Join their conversations, directly respond to those who ask you questions and thank those to re-tweet your content.

Cross-Promote – Promote your Twitter stream via all of your other communication channels, including email, website and other social media sites like Facebook. In addition, post your account address and hashtag at your events, and offer incentives for consumers to continue following after they have attended your experience such as trivia contests, Twitter-only discounts for your products, etc.

Follow Through – Don’t think of Twitter as just a way to promote your experiential programs before they happen, also be sure to tweet during your events. Tweet photos and video of the activities, and also tweet out thanks to followers who show up. This will encourage more interaction, and allow you to gain feedback about your events in real time. It also allows followers who are not physically present to still share in the experience (further enhancements of tweet photos and video can include posting longer video clips on YouTube or even live streaming the action on sites like Ustream).

Of course, this works both ways, as social media can be utilized to drive event participation as well. We recently executed an experiential campaign for PayPal in New York, Chicago and San Francisco called the PayPal Tweet Hunt (Click here to view photos). Consumers were encouraged to follow PayPal’s @PayPalShopping Twitter account, which made them eligible to participate in the Tweet Hunt and win prizes such as flights, jewelry, gadgets and gift cards.

Listen - After you have started the conversation on Twitter, be sure to follow where it goes. There are many listening tools that allow you to track followers, retweets of your posts and direct mentions of your Twitter account name or related hashtags. All of these metrics can be measured and tracked, and can be used to build a scorecard for how your Twitter activity drives additional connections with consumers around your events.

One of the advantages to Twitter is that it is extremely easy to get started. Plus, it’s free.

We’ve even given you a head start. Just follow these simple suggestions to begin extending your brand’s offline experiential and promotional marketing campaigns into social media.