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Guest post by Ainslie Hunter from Study Skills Mentor and EduWebMedia.

I found my dream job…. and I mean dream job. A blogger / editor job for an experienced teacher. It was there in black and white on the Problogger Job Boards. Sure it was December 21, but I had finished my Christmas Shopping so I sat down and got started.

A Regular Job Interview Process

In my teaching career I have applied for 5 jobs. Face to face interviews are easy. You send in the resume, they check your references and then you hopefully get an interview. My interviews have never lasted more than 30 minutes and I have found out the outcome in a couple of days.

Does that sound familiar to you?

Well applying for an online job is a whole different game.

Problogger Job Interview Process

To gain an online job as a Blogger / Editor I have completed six general steps, and one that is a little crazy.

The application

If you are a regular reader of the Problogger Job board you will notice a trend in Job descriptions. A writing job is pretty straightforward. But many of the Blogger / Editor positions are long and vague. This job wanted a blogger who could do it all, but didn’t give out specifics of the time, pay, or responsibilities.

So I applied with two documents. The first was a standard cover letter and resume that listed my education and experience in teaching and blogging. The second was a two page proposal outlining my strategy for the company. I didn’t know what they wanted, but knew that my resume wouldn’t have given them enough information.

First email contact

About a week later I received an email from the company. They loved my proposal but were worried about location issues; they were in the US and I was here in Australia. I answered with strategies on how to deal with time difference and how we could overcome my lack of understanding of US education issues. For each point, I could see many positives from being outside of the US.

Skype Interview

Another week went by and I had a Skype Interview planned for 5:30 in the morning. It would have been so much easier to go to someone’s office then to have an interview online. Since it was a video conference I had to make sure I didn’t look like I just crawled out of bed, my office had to be clean and my 2 year old had to be bribed with a Macca’s breakfast.

The interview lasted nearly an hour and was a standard interview, once I got over the fact that I was on a massive projector screen.

Second Proposal

I decided to write a second proposal. It was a synthesis of ideas that came from the interview. An impression from the interview was a concern that I was an unknown person from destination elsewhere. So in the proposal I also gave examples of accountability practices that we could use to keep track of me.

Writing Assignment

On the 15th of January I was asked to submit a blog article on behaviour management. We had three days to write the post. Simple enough but I took a few risks with my approach.

Keeping up with Appearances

During the month I also made sure I looked after my blog and readers. I spent more time crafting blogs, wrote a Guest Post and became more involved on Twitter. I also put out a call for guest posts (as it was something that concerned the interviewers) Google Analytics is a wonderful tool and I was able to tell that the company was monitoring my blog on a regular basis.

Little Bit Crazy

Well now a month has gone by and the company still hasn’t made a decision yet. I wanted to make them know that I was still excited about the job and that I have strong convictions about my ability as a blogger. I wanted to stand out of the crowd. So I got a little adventurous…

I sent a Thank You Card and a box of Tim Tams. Express. To America. With a note that said “Let’s have another chat over Skype. I have supplies the Tim Tams.”

I had just read a quote from Teresa Taylor, “I never hire someone without having a meal with them. I am absolutely convinced that that’s how you see what people are really like…you can pick up all these lifestyle things that you can’t get out of questioned them sitting in your office.” I wanted to show them that I was happy to have a chat over coffee so they could get to know me better.

I reached out to an online friend. Josh from World’s Strongest Librarian put my post on his site. I wanted to see how others would respond to my story.

I sent this post to Darren.

So Did the Tim Tam’s work? Not sure. I just checked Australia Post and they are still in transit. Somewhere between LA and New York.

I still hope I get the job. I really do want it. But this experience has taught me so much about applying for online positions. Whilst blogging experience is important, what our future employers are looking for is someone they can trust. Especially if that person will be blogging from destination unknown.

We all know that trust takes time to develop with our own blog readers. But time is not a commodity you have when applying and interviewing for an online job. So you also need to find a way to show entrepreneurial spirit.

Have you got any great strategies on how to ace a blogger job and? Let us know.

Read more from Ainslie Hunter at Study Skills Mentor and EduWebMedia.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How a $50 packet of Tim Tams could get you a Blogger Job

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How a $50 packet of Tim Tams could get you a Blogger Job

The big news on Twitter at the moment is how an artist on The Hidden World of Eloise has had some of their artwork copied and then distributed by Paperchase.  Apparently they’ve contacted Paperchase who have promptly ignored them, they’ve also found taking them on too costly and so now they have resorted to the [...]

Paperchase Alleged Copyright Theft is a post from: Dave Naylor’s SEO Blog.

Related posts:

1. destination management
2. Search Engine Reputation Management PT II
3. Bitrex

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Paperchase Alleged Copyright Theft

DirectCPV has put a lot of effort and countless hours in improving their advertiser platform and they’re pleased to announce that their new and improved Advertiser Campaign Management Platform Version 2.0 is now ready for use.

The redesigned advertiser backend features a more advanced user interface that is easier to use and boasts a horde of new tools that make managing your campaigns a snap. Some of our new features and changes include:

• No Credit Card Required: New advertisers will no longer have to provide any credit card information to sign up for a new account. This means that you can refer advertisers to try out our system for free, without any obligations! Payment information is only required when they decide to launch their campaigns.
• Bulk URL or Keyword Upload: We’ve made it easy for you to enter URLs or keywords to target your campaigns. Use our new import interface to enter up 10,000 keywords or URLs per campaign. Saves a lot of time for advertisers who have a large number of URLs or keywords to target.
• Domain Competitor Finder: A nifty tool to find out who your competitors are getting their traffic from. We’ve spidered 80 million live domains with all their link info to give you the edge you need over your competitors.
• Search Engine Spider: Use this amazing tool to generate URLs targets for your campaigns. Simply enter the number of pages to spider and it’ll automatically extract URLs from Google and Yahoo to target your campaign.
• Keyword Suggestion Tool: Discover the best keywords to target using our comprehensive keyword tool. Zero in on the best keywords that deliver the most results. (Coming soon)
• Domain Research Tool: Simple to use research tool to easily find domains to target. Simply enter any keyword to get instant access to 80 million live .com and .net domains in our database to suit your target. (Coming soon)

Use Code JCH30 For $30 Bonus

Unlike other CPV networks, DirectCVP requires only a $100 deposit to start a campaign. However, if you enter JCH30 when you make your deposit, they’ll credit your account with an extra $30. It doesn’t cost anything to sign up for DirectCPV but you must deposit at least $100 before you can use the service. This is a very inexpensive way to test a new traffic source and you’ll get a $30 bonus to boot.

Sign Up For DirectCPV

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

Read more here:
DirectCPV Launches New Advertiser Management Backend

Yesterday Vodafone found itself in a troublesome situation when its corporate Twitter account was posted to by what seems to be a disgruntled employee in its customer service department.As soon as the message was posted Vodafone had hundreds of messages wondering if their account had been hacked and complaints about the content of the tweet. [...]

Vodafone Reputation Management Problem or Linkbait? is a post from: Dave Naylor’s SEO Blog.

Related posts:

1. Search Engine Reputation Management : Tele2 sucks
2. Search Engine Reputation Management PT II
3. Linkbait or just life

View original post here: 
Vodafone Reputation Management Problem or Linkbait?

If you’re reading this while at the GetListed Local University seminar, a big welcome to you. Thanks for visiting SmallBusinessSEM.com. In my presentation, I mention a couple dozen web sites, articles, and other links that you may not have had time to jot down while I was speaking. If that’s the case, here are all the references I made in chronological order:

Trust
SEO Success Pyramid

Stats
Nielsen: Led by Facebook, Twitter, Global Time Spent on Social Media Sites up 82% Year over Year

Blogs
Jeremiah Owyang: Web Strategy: How To Evolve Your Irrelevant Corporate Website
HubSpot: Study Shows Small Businesses That Blog Get 55% More Website Visitors
Dr. Cynthia Bailey: OTB Skin Care Blog
Mike Blumenthal: Understanding Google Maps & Local Search
Seth Godin: The number one secret of the great blogs

Twitter
switchwinebar
AlbionsOven
WoodhouseSpa
YogiJones (Berry Chill)
Twitter Advanced Search
NearbyTweets
ChirpCity
LocaFollow

Facebook
Search Engine Land fan page
SearchEngineLand.com (fan page widget in right column)

Reviews
Nielsen: Consumers Trust Real Friends and Virtual Strangers the Most
Local Search Ranking Factors
Yelp FAQ (most reviews are positive)
Bazaarvoice Industry Statistics (most reviews are positive)

Reputation Management
Google Alerts
Yahoo Alerts
TweetBeep
SocialMention
BlogPulse
Yelp Business Owners’ Guide

If you have any questions or feedback about my presentation or the session in general, feel free to leave a comment below. There’s also a Contact button at the top of the page. I’d love to hear from you!

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This is a post from Matt McGee’s blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

Welcome GetListed Local University – Spokane Attendees

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Welcome GetListed Local University – Spokane Attendees

Whew. The 3rd annual SEMMY Awards are finally in the books. The winners in all 17 categories were announced this morning, and it’s a really great collection of articles. I’m proud to say that there are several first-time winners on this list, from several blogs/sites that were never even nominated before. That makes me happy, and suggests to me that the SEMMYS are on the right track. (I’m also proud to see my guest post on Small Biz Trends from last year win — it’s the one in the Small Business category below.)

Here’s the full list of winners:

• SEO: Surviving and Thriving as an Ecommerce SEO
• PPC: Discovering Keywords On the Cheap
• Social Media: 7 Reasons Your Social Media Marketing Failed (and how to fix it!)
• Local Search: Google Maps’ New Rules – Thoughts on Assumed Names and DBAs
• Link Building: 10 Goals For Link Building Campaigns: Moving Beyond “Get More Links”
• Blogs & Blogging: Guest Blogging: The Ultimate Guide
• Viral Marketing: 5 Must Do’s After A Successful Viral Marketing Campaign
• Analytics: Google Analytics For Local Search: Tracking Traffic From The 10 Pack
• Reputation Management: Be Proactive With Your Reputation Management
• Small Business: If I Were Launching a New Small Biz Web Site Today
• Google: Google Enables Real Time Spam and More
• Search Tech: The SEO geeks guide to information retrieval
• Design & Usability: Everyday Usability – 14-Point Checklist for Success
• Online Marketing/General: Thinking Positively About Negative Reviews
• Industry: 10 Questions to Evaluate a Social Media ‘Expert’
• Copywriting: Does Your Copy Need a Makeover? 7 Tests That Measure the Verbal Impact of Your Business Message
• Rants: Ignore the Silly Man, SEO Still Matters For SMBs

What’s Next for the SEMMY Awards

Every year there’s some grumbling and griping about the SEMMYS and how they’re organized. (BTW, if you’re not familiar with how it all works, I had a good conversation with Kim Krause-Berg in the comments of her post here.)

There was a lot less griping this year, which obviously pleases me. But I’ll say what I’ve said before: If anyone has constructive ideas and suggestions for how to make the SEMMYS better, I’m all ears. There’s a contact form right on this blog.

For now, the eight-person nominating committee is already busy nominating articles for next year’s awards. The committee will do that all year, and then next January I’ll roundup the judges to choose finalists in each category and we’ll go through the process again. I’m thinking it would be nice to find some new judges next year, not because I’m unhappy with the folks volunteering as judges now — but because it’s been mostly the same group for three years now, and there are a lot of smart, new people in our industry who I think would add a good voice to the process.

Thanks

First, to web designer extraordinaire David Mihm for all his time and energy keeping the SEMMYS web site in great shape.

Thanks also to the volunteer judges and nominating committee members for their time. They’re all listed in the Contributors & Judges blogroll on semmys.org.

Thanks to the folks who voted for winners in any/all of the 17 categories. There were more votes cast this year than either of the last two years.

Thanks to everyone across the industry who chooses to embrace the SEMMYS, especially those who do so without taking it too seriously. It’s odd to me that some well-known sites/blogs ignore the SEMMYS, but that’s their choice. Life goes on.

And thanks to all the excellent writers and bloggers who continue to teach me and the rest of us with your great articles, blog posts, and other types of content. I hope you see the SEMMYS as a token of the industry’s appreciation for you, whether you win or not.

Advertisement: WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool delivers more keywords, faster than paid tools and always 100% free. Try it today!

This is a post from Matt McGee’s blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

2010 SEMMY Winners Announced

Related posts:

1. 2010 SEMMY Finalists Announced
2. Congrats to the 2008 SEMMY Winners!
3. 2010 SEMMY Nominations Announced (and they include me!)

See the original post here: 
2010 SEMMY Winners Announced

So I’m not really sure what this panel is going to be about because I originally had something else scheduled. Still, I think this will be a good time, and this way I don’t have to run between rooms for the next session. This also means I won’t lose my seat.

It’s a win-win. I mean just look at this line up:

Moderator:
Matt McGowan, Incisive Media

Speakers: (left to right)
Steven Kaufman, MediaMath
Jonathan Mendez, RAMP Digital
Dax Hamman, iCrossing

Matt McGowan gets us started as the Wi-Fi dies yet again. We’re going to be talking about how search ads have overtaken display ads. He introduces Jonathan, who pitched this session back at SES San Jose.

Jonathan Mendez takes the podium. When he got started in search he sort of hated display. They got all the money and the glory but didn’t convert as well and weren’t trackable like search.

He brings up the old slide of the Golden Triangle (pre-Universal). He compares it to heat tracking for display ads where people don’t look at the ads even a little bit.

Display falls victim to ad blindness and attention deficit disorder.

Search as display has better metrics. Let’s compare the two.

Intent

• Display: looks for awareness, reach and frequency, CPM
• The new display/”Search” OS: looks for performance, data, CPx

Segmentation

• Display: bulk, site demo, past behavior
• Search: differentiated, audience, current behavior

Creative

• Display: no versioning, high development cost, lead time
• Search: targeted, dynamic, self serve

Buying

• Display: rate card, verbal, i/o
• Search: bid and real-time bidding, exchanges, automated

Campaign Management

• Display: high minimum, switching costs, no optimization
• Search: low minimum, no switching cost, optimization

Steven Kaufman is up next.

On the left side of the supply landscape is real time bidding. You need to have some kind of agency to put that in place and manage it. It’s fast but it’s intensive and most aren’t there yet. Most bidding is done in the API level. Fewer but still some campaigns are done on UI bidding. Bid sheets are much more rare and very slow. They have “The Brain” which will figure bids and spit out information that’s right for each type of bidding.

[Still more about MediaMath here. If you would like to learn about how to use their tools, I'd suggest visiting their site. I'm too tired to recap an ad.]

He goes through a case study where they were able to do a DR campaign, add in a brand campaign and increased volume and conversions. So that’s nice.

Dax Hamman is up next. He has an awesome accent. [A cool name, too! --Virginia]

Typical large brand scenario:

+ pressure to grow revenues
+ sophisticated SEM program
+ need alternative ROI channels

= evolution of display media

He doesn’t think real time buying is a new thing.

We cannot continue to shout at the crowd. That has a tremendous amount of waste in it. We must talk to individuals. By its nature, search is talking to individuals. They needed new tools to make display act more like search.

Search retargeting (Yahoo):

Step 1: Individual searches for a term relevant to your business
Step 2: Individual is tagged with a cookie
Step 3: Individual clicks on an ad that isn’t yours
Step 4: Individuals can be identified by you 15 minutes later and they can be served an ad that brings them back

Site retargeting:

Step 1: Individual comes to the site
Step 2: The visit is recorded by a tracking pixel, but the user leaves before converting
Step 3: The tagged individual is identified again and an ad is displayed that it directly relevant
Step 4: The individual clicks on the ad and is brought back to your sight

These new media exchanges allow companies to buy “audiences” instead of inventory. It’s useless to buy if you don’t know your audience.

What if:

A lot of consumers think that cookies are evil. The FTC wants cookies to be opt-in. It has huge implications for affliates and tracking. Europe already has opt-in cookies. As of April 26, 2011 cookies must all be opt-in. He encourages everyone to go read up on it and learn about it. NIA is trying to go to an opt-out model. If you like cookies, support the NIA.

Matt says that’s a bit doom and gloom, which… yeah it is. Yikes, Dax.

Dax says that exchanges are reaching critical mass. It’s not leftover data which is what people think. It’s people and you can target people directly. That’s why CPMs are low right now — it hasn’t yet been realized as valuable.

Steven says that part of it is that people will pay more for The New York Times than for Publisher 12345. They need to convince people to expose that they’re selling on the exchanges.

Matt asks if the reason CPM is so low is because there’s too much supply and not enough demand. Dax thinks so but says that search retargeting is exchanges, and people don’t realize that.

Someone asks Dax to expand on social retargeting and how they identify who your friends are. What follows is the most distressing explanation ever. So they follow you from the site where you got cookied to Facebook. Then they take note of your Facebook ID and watch who you interact with on Facebook to figure out who your best friends are. Then they advertise to you on places other than Facebook with that information.

[Note to self: Delete cookies. Though, oddly enough, I don't talk to my best friends on Facebook. That's all family, high school people and you horrible marketer types.]

Search Becomes the Display OS was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

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Search Becomes the Display OS

Facebook Rockstars Roundtable: Marketing for the Other Internet

We’re in the home stretch now. I’m still nervously checking my flight status but at the moment I might just get home tonight. Score.

The panel is providing their own music as we get ready for a rock star session. Marty Weintraub is blasting “Never Let You Go” by Third Eye Blind and Muhammad Saleem requests “Beautiful Day” by U2. We get about a minute of that before we switch over to Vertigo and there’s some chatter about the original iPod ad. We got through a couple more U2 songs before switching to Rush. Marty, meanwhile, has been encouraging everyone to sit as close to the front as possible, promising that it will be worth our while. I hope there’s crowd surfing. Your panel, ladies and gentlemen. Here’s the official version:

Moderator:
Marty Weintraub, aimClear

Speakers:
Addie Conner, Avenue100 Media Solutions
Melissa Mackey, Fluency Media
Muhammad Saleem, ChicagoNow

This is a panel without slides, alas. It’s going to be about talented people who can cross channel.

What do the people in the room want to know about?

• Better metrics
• Advanced targeting features
• Job and talent search using Facebook
• Percentage of spend on Facebook
• Is it better to get a fan or a web site visitor?
• FTC regulations (it’s the wild west)
• Conversion funnels from Facebook
• Strategy for moderating speech from your advocates [Marty just laughs]
• ORM

Quick panel facts: Melissa Mackey is @mel66. Muhammad Saleem works with 150 different bloggers on the site. Addie Conner has a giant mug of coffee and I want it.

Marty calls Facebook the “other freaking Internet” — 350 million people that Google can’t index and who are fanatically engaged.

Q&A

What do you do when you first walk up to Facebook as a business?

Mu: They didn’t have anything when they started: no vanity URL, no profile, no call to action. Match your branding objectives to your actual platform.

How did you bring together many groups in Michigan?

Melissa: They did a lot of outreach and started a lot of conversations. The rules your mother taught you still apply. They could have been hard-ass about it and said, “Hey we’re the state of Michigan, take your page down,” but they had conversations instead.

How do you make money?

Addie: It’s all about knowing your audience. Do a survey, send e-mails, get the analytics. Get the users that have demand even if they don’t already know it. They’re in academic lead gen. They know who wants to and should be a nurse before they do.

Marty: Reputation defense is something you need to do for sure. Go into organic search and see what comes up. Then pretend you’re setting up ads and see what’s showing up for your company.

What should I do? Facebook page, group, profile?

Mu: We have a page for our corporate presences for the whole network. At the same time, some individual bloggers have groups because they need greater levels of control and more intimate conversations. Groups are limited to 5000 members and you can e-mail all of them. Admins on page have larger membership but can’t email.

Melissa: They started with a group and moved to a fan page.

Marty: Facebook gives marketers great tools to do classic human tasks. He used to have to feed photos to his mother by taking the pictures, developing them, driving them to her. Now he can post them on Facebook.

Is it possible to target people by Facebook Wall posts?

Addie: It’s not possible. It’s not one of the options.

Marty asks Addie: What information do you pull down from the Facebook API?

Addie: It’s not as robust as it should be. They use it for click information. They found that people who clicked on their ads were also interested in the Bible so they created a religious schools landing page.

Tell me about the word of mouth marketing. How do you greet people? How do you find the right people?

Mu: They didn’t approach Facebook as something different than the rest of their other social sites. They always put in a call to action to bring visitors from other sites to their fan page.

Melissa: They promote events. They played around with the number of things that they were posting and what time of day. Mid morning, lunchtime and mid afternoon are the best times to post.

Addie: User behavior patterns on Facebook are incredible. Users convert at night and on the weekends. Users browse during the weeks. More people convert coming in through apps (like Farmville). You can see which apps they came from and which converts best for you.

How do you integrate Facebook Connect with your blog?

Mel: They don’t use Facebook connect but they do cross-promote everything. They post snippets and links of all blog posts.

Marty: There are a lot of ways to cross-promote.

Mu: There are lots of ways to connect. Driving traffic, sign-ups, conversations. They don’t use Facebook Connect to use allow comments because they want the user information, they want those signups on their system. They don’t post everything — just snippets of highly focused content to capture interest.

Marty: Learn to market with your snippet. Compare Digg bookmarks to the actual titles. That’s marketing.

Mu: Customize your Meta information before you click the share button.

How do you guys feel about ping.fm?

Mu: Ping allows you to cross-post across multiple services. It’s not usually good because the messaging shouldn’t necessarily be identical.

How do you integrate Facebook into your marketing mix?

Mel: They didn’t get any value out of integrating their Twitter stream into Facebook. They wanted community and Twitter was just noise. It’s all about speaking the right language. If you walk into a room and everyone’s speaking Spanish and you start speaking English, they’re going to look at you funny even if they speak English.

Mu: Twitter-specific language doesn’t translate to Facebook. You have to optimize to each.

Addie: Facebook is a young platform. There’s a lot of testing that still needs to go on. She’s talking Facebook Ads. They drive people offsite to a conversion. Their conversion rates are similar to search.

Marty: Facebook is a conversation about paid, organic and social. A little bit of everything.

What kind of staff do you have dedicated to the running of strategy and not the paid element?

Mel: They don’t have a full time person on it. The client handles Twitter because it’s more time intensive.

Mu: It’s just him at the moment but they’re going to be moving to one hour and one person per vertical per day. The best way to look at it would be that right up front you’re going to be putting a lot of time into it matching demographics and building conversation, but once that’s good, it doesn’t take a lot of time.

How do you recruit/find jobs on Facebook?

Addie: Usually when you’re recruiting, you’re geo-targeting. Then you can target by job title, degree, passions, groups. It’s all about referring your friends on Facebook, right? So do an ad that refers your friends and get people to recommend their friends to you.

How can you use Facebook Groups for marketing?

Marty and Mel aren’t impressed with the performance of Groups but Mu thinks they have a place as a small local discussion platform. Marty says they do aggressive research in terms of marketing.

Addie asks Marty: Hey, Marty, can you pay an influencer to promote your stuff on their Wall? Is that illegal?

Marty: He doesn’t know but he does know that his clients would never stand for it.

Mel: You might not have to pay them. Some people are just enthusiastic.

Mu: He wouldn’t pay anyone to do promote your stuff. For him, it’s a matter of transparency. If you say it’s a paid tweet or something, it’s not a big deal. If he suspects you’re being paid and you didn’t say so, he loses trust.

How do you keep your fan page interesting if you don’t have content because you’re an e-commerce business?

Marty: Well, you have to be interesting.

Mu: Don’t sell the service, sell the lifestyle. Don’t just offer coupons, sell a frugal lifestyle.

Addie: If you’re not interesting in and of yourself, create something interesting and build an interesting community so that you can sell your boring product to them.

Facebook Rockstars Roundtable: Marketing for the Other Internet was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

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Facebook Rockstars Roundtable: Marketing for the Other Internet

The college intern: a motivated hardworking student looking to prove himself (or herself) and willing to go the extra mile just to make a good impression, often for little or no monetary compensation. For the start-up, the intern is a godsend. It allows them to get a temporary but highly motivated employee, who is often times more interested in being compensated with experiences and connections than a salary. Unfortunately for start-ups, recruiting top talent from the internship pool can be a difficult process as the best and brightest are looking for internships with well known Fortune 500 companies such as Google or Microsoft. Hence, in order to succeed in the “internship game” a start-up must present an opportunity that no large corporation can offer. In this post I will outline what college students are looking for in internships and what small start-up companies can offer to make their positions more appealing when compared to those available at much larger firms.

As a little background, my name is Aditya Mahesh and I am currently a sophomore at UC Berkeley. Like nearly every other college student on the Berkeley campus and campuses across the nation, I spend the six months leading up to summer break searching and interviewing for various internship positions from across the globe. While most internship related articles are focused on providing the student with help securing an internship, I would like to turn the tables and tell start-ups what students are looking for and how they can land “top-talent” interns. The advice in this article is based on my own personal experience and information I gathered from interviews with dozens of other students from universities across the United States ranging from MIT to Stanford.

Prove the Start-Up

The biggest concerns college students have with accepting positions in start-ups are issues with credibility. Why would a student reject an internship with a well-known company to accept one with a no-name start-up? Hence, the most important thing a start-up can do is prove why it will be successful and why the student should want to get involved. A good concept and high sales projections are no longer enough.

One of the most important indicators of credibility for interns is the management team. Try to highlight the previous successes of the founders and executives of the company. Raising investment, even if it is just seed capital, from investors who have had “hits” in the past is also another great way to show credibility. Start-ups should be sure to highlight relationships they have with well known individuals, organizations, and corporations.

Give Interns Leadership Positions

“Leadership” is a huge buzzword when it comes to job applications and interns are all too well aware of this. They desperately want leadership positions to showcase on their resumes after graduation. Hence, one advantage start-ups have over larger companies is that it is easier for them to delegate more responsibility and give interns the opportunity to lead others.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to create internship programs where interns have a very specific task and give interns the resources they need to complete this task. For example, if it is the interns job to develop an online marketing campaign to promote the launch of a new section of the website, say the company blog, give the intern time with employees from the creative department, the software development department, and the content creation department to complete the task. Hence, the intern can say that he led a diverse team from various departments to reach a specific target goal, while all departments have some input on the final project and the entire process can be supervised by someone in management.

Numbers related to Growth

In a resume, numbers are VERY VERY important. Interns are looking for opportunities where they can prove some quantitative results. Hence, while it is difficult for start-up companies to compete with larger firms on raw numbers (ex. Helped developed and worked on a $50 million marketing campaign for Microsoft vs. $50,000 marketing campaign for start-up A), start-ups have a great advantage over larger corporation when it comes to statistics related to growth (helped increase traffic to the website by 30% or tripled subscription rate for company newsletter).

Immediate Job Opportunity

While college students know that internships are a great way to make connections to secure a job in the future, start-up companies have the flexibility to offer immediate part-time employment. Potential interns will look far more favorably on a program which offers the opportunity for part-time employment after the internship is complete and the fall semester begins.

Very few large corporations offer such programs; it is chiefly in start-ups where this opportunity exists. Hence, the interview can act as sort of a “job interview” for immediate employment.

Allow Students to Network

Students who consider accepting positions in up and coming start-ups are often times very entrepreneurially minded and hope to start their own business. They know that in the business world it is all about who you know and are looking to build new relationships and make new connections.

Hence start-ups present an opportunity since they allow interns to be close to the people involved with starting a business and getting it off the ground. Allowing entrepreneurial interns to see the inner workings of actually starting and growing a business and giving them the opportunity to network with fellow entrepreneurs and venture capitalists/investors is a great way to attract the attention of top students.

This post was written by Aditya Mahesh, founder of AMBeat.com, a complete resource for entrepreneurs complete with advice articles, start-up profiles, interviews, news analysis, and more.

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How To Recruit The Best College Interns for Your Start-up or Small Business