Lakshmipathy Bhat
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W+K's social strategy to hire Social Strategist for Old Spice

Wieden + Kennedy is looking to hire a Social Strategist to work on Old Spice. So what's new you ask? The manner in which the web is being put to use in the hiring process. W+K has given a set of intriguing challenges to the potential candidates:

Challenge 1 - Create the best original Pinterest board dedicated to the sport of inline speed skating (NOT roller-hockey).

Challenge 2 - Create and post an original piece of content to Reddit that then receives the most upvotes in a single week.

Challenge 3 - Create and upload to SlideShare an original, in-depth competitive analysis of the Ed Hardy social media ecosystem.

Challenge 4 - Get the most people to friend your mother or your father (or a parent-like figure in your life) on Facebook in a single week.

Challenge 5 - Create an original (new) Twitter account and then use it to get the most followers in a week using any verbs you like, but only the following nouns: "BLUEFUDGE," "HAMMERPANTS" and "GREEK YOGURT."

Challenge 6 - Create an original YouTube video that then receives the most plays in a single week using this script verbatim:

#1: "Wait. What are you doing?"

#2: "Trust me. This will be fine."

#1: "Ok. Go ahead."

Challenge 7 - Get recommendations on LinkedIn from at least three other people trying to get this job.

Challenge 8 - Create the most reviewed recipe on allrecipes.com in a single week using cottage cheese as an ingredient. The reviews don't have to be good.

Challenge 9 - Upload the most pictures of your armpit(s) to Instagram during the course of this challenge. The pictures must have your face in them to verify your identity and include the hashtag #mypits.

Challenge 10 - Using Quora, give thought-out, meaningful answers to as many dream catcher-related questions as possible in a single week.

The candidates will have 5 days to complete one or more challenges listed above. The actual job description is not very different from a 'regular' Social Strategist. But the sheer novelty of this approach sends in a lot of messages: (a) it is a high profile job since the expectations will be very high for Old Spice and W+K given the track record; hence anything 'regular' will not suffice (b) blogs and media across the world are writing about this novel approach; that's how buzz is created (c) it gives a cool image to the agency as a place to work.

I wonder how many of the traditional mainstream agency folks would even be familiar with some of the platforms mentioned in the list and if they've ever participated in any of them.

W+K's social strategy to hire Social Strategist for Old Spice

Original article was published here

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