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Charlie Sheen Intern Stunt Nets Visibility for Internships.com

Mar 8, 2011
This article is part of a series called News & Trends.

In case you somehow missed it — perhaps you were under anesthesia — Charlie Sheen is looking for an intern.

You have to wonder what parent would allow their child to take the job.  But leaving that issue for the parenting sites to take up, the job is both real and promotional.

While Sheen may have joined the ranks of unemployed actors, remarkably, he is not unemployable. The internship job posting and Sheen’s tweeting about it is all about promoting Internships.com.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Sheen was paid at least five figures for this tweet yesterday: “I’m looking to hire a #winning INTERN with #TigerBlood. Apply here – http://bit.ly/hykQQF #TigerBloodIntern #internship #ad.”

The company that brokers celebrity tweeting, Ad.ly, wouldn’t say how much Sheen was paid. But the Journal story said it was the highest amount the young company had ever paid a celeb for a single tweet. Another report said this: “ad.ly’s top celebrities (earn) about $10,000 per tweet.”

The question of course is did Internships.com get its money worth? The other question: How will a Charlie Sheen endorsement play in the recruiting community?

Only Internships.com can answer the first question. But there is plenty of evidence to say yes. Although too early for a one day traffic read from the public tracking sites, the Twitter mentions of Internships.com or the job (which links to the site) is way over the top.

Quantcast estimates Internships visitors at around 40,000 for the last month. It has been rising slowly, if steadily, since the site launched a year ago. Through Sunday, Google counted 234,000 mentions of Internships.com. Since Monday, there were 61,000 and rising.

Internships’ Twitter account has gotten several notes about people applying for the position and the hashtag TigerBloodIntern has so many references that counting them all is beyond my patience level. That Charlie Sheen is a trending topic right now is hardly surprising, though his follower growth rate is nothing short of breathtaking. Within a day of launching his account on March 1, Sheen had a million followers. Now he has 2.2 million.

If Internships was looking to raise its profile (that’s actually rhetorical), it has certainly done that. Hundreds of news stories in the last 24 hours mention Internships.com. With so many of them linking to the Charlie Sheen job posting, its awareness level has to be on the rise.

Between the traffic jump and the Sheen application acknowledgment page which encourages a search for other internships, recruiters who haven’t yet discovered Internships.com just might want to see what it offers.

Once past the obvious publicity stunt, the site is as as serious an internship site as any, and, with listings free to post and resumes free to search. Registration is required.

Like The Ladders, Internships.com makes its money by selling premium access to seekers. For $20 a year students get a variety of services including a video resume posting, premium placement of their resume when it matches a search, assessments, and more. Searching and resume submission are free to all.

This article is part of a series called News & Trends.
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