What do you do when you're feeling workshy and fancy a diversion from the to-do list?

Well, not so long ago we decided to shun a day in the office in favour of a morning coffee. This lead to a cheeky little brainstorm for video ideas, which lead to thinking about Valentine's day, which lead to coming-up with an idea, which lead to grabbing people from the street, dragging them into a room and filming this little promo!

Was great fun. We did the whole thing in a day and below is the result... 

Our friends at RateMyPlacement have just held the inaugural National Placement and Internship Awards celebrating the best employer and student contributions to work experience.

Being a nosey bunch, we were thrilled to be asked along to film the proceedings and find out what they're all about.

Check out our promo film of the day below...

We love psychometric tests. Not the rubbish ones you take at school which set you up for a career in fish hatchery management. And not the ridiculous ones you get in magazines. But proper, validated and relevant tests which really help act as a weather vein - narrowing down your career options and setting you off in the right direction.

We're currently finishing-up our own fully validated psychometrics zone on CareerPlayer, which will offer something completely new to the market. It's v. exciting and we can't wait to get it up and running.

In the meantime - here's a great concept for anyone interested in graduate jobs or careers in the creative industries. During our filming in these sectors one thing that became clear was that a really key skill was left brain / right brain thinking. And it turns out this isn't just a hypothesis - it has a proper name and it's called diagonal thinking.

Diagonal thinking is the ability of successful people in advertising and marketing communications to think outstandingly well in both linear/inductive and lateral/creative ways. In 2003 the IPA set out to establish whether the most successful people in the industry had this trait and after testing 5 discipline cohorts concluded that there was indeed a strong statistical link. To find our more about the research visit the IPA site.

So. What are the top brains in commercial creativity like? According to the IPA "They're innovative, can explain concepts in both rational and emotional terms, have a broad range of interests and a passion for execution. They can be highly logical, but link ideas hitherto seen as remote from each other; they want to do work that is creative, but also for it to have a practical impact." Is that you reader? Why not take the test and find out...

If you want to get a better feel for what the creative industries are like check out our films on:

Graduate Jobs in Advertising

Graduate Jobs in Marketing

Graduate Jobs in Media Planning

Or if you just want to know your perfect celeb hairstyle - here you go!

There are more graduate career fairs than you can shake a stick at this month. If you're still looking for a graduate job take a look at our event listings - you won't find a more comprehensive guide online.

Never been to a graduate career fair before? Take a look at our video for some tips and advice.

Check out our latest news article on CareerPlayer for an insight into how to stay ahead of the competition by incorporating Twitter into your job search armoury. 

Big week for us at CareerPlayer, the Beta site has come out of testing and is now live. Check it out here.

Had some amazing feedback so far and a slightly overwhelming amount of interest from students and companies. All body parts crossed in the hope that holds up!

Still lots to do, we can't wait to release our psychometrics update which adds a brilliant innovation to the typical format. Any feedback on the beta site is hugely welcome so do post a comment or send us an email.

As we're rather steeped in video we thought it would only be right to film a quick overview of the site. Here goes...

Just a quick post to big-up our resident directing, editing and all round production guru Adam Levins who shot a movie before joining us that was recently shortlisted for the slamdance film festival. The short film, starring Danny Dyer, has been snapped-up by revolver entertainment and is definitely one to look out for. Chances of us permanantely loosing Adam to Hollywood? Annoyingly high!

 
City Rats Teaser Trailer from Adam Levins on Vimeo.

New Year. New Resolutions and new habits. The first of which is to be a bit more consistent on the blogging front. We've been rampantly busy preparing for the launch of careerplayer.com which has slightly distracted us. But we're back!

So what have we been up to? Well, we've edited, optimised and uploaded over 2,500 graduate career video clips for a start. So if anyone needs advice on the best formats, codecs and Kbps for web streaming, we're your geeks. We met the Edge foundation to talk about bringing careers to life and why there are so few decent career discovery tools around. And we've made some pretty big leaps forward with our video platform. All in all, I reckon we've moved from Neanderthal man to spear man in the evolution stakes. Progress indeed!

Following on from the last post i thought i'd have a quick peek through our video library to see what other business tips i could find. Managed to dig out quite a few which is handy as i'd be rather worried for our success if we didn't have any!

They're pretty short but i'll post a few of them to see if any strike a chord. Here's the first little nugget from Tanya Livesely, MD of The Talent Business...



No running allowed! from careerplayer.com on Vimeo.

I wonder how many of us could stick to that? Anyway must dash stroll off in an orderly and statesmanlike fashion.

So, the blog is ready to go and here lies the inaugural post. Well readers or probably reader singular at this point (hi mum), the plan is to keep everyone informed about how things are developing at careerplayer.com as we prepare to launch.

We’ll try not get too introspective on you so expect much naval gazing about the online recruitment market in general, the state of careers advice, graduate attraction, launching a start-up, online video and just about anything that touches on what we’re up to. A slightly mixed bag but it'll hopefully keep things interesting...