With the demand for SEO professionals growing faster than the supply, many companies are scratching their heads at how to recruit and maintain top talent.  Over at EngineWorks they are developing their internship program to cultivate new talent that understands their practices and techniques.  Their inaugural intern, Courtney Nelson, has questioned the definition of an intern in her post, Is the SEM Intern Today’s Apprentice?  Courtney sought out the advice of the many of the industry’s experts to try and define the two terms and find a difference.  These days, both titles provide the person with experience they wouldn’t receive learning on their own.  From the feedback she received, Courtney concluded that SEM internships are the “modern equivalent” of an apprenticeship, with time-frame and responsibility being the major differences.  In both cases, sitting along side an SEM expert with well developed and proven techniques for any period of time will shorten the SEM learning curve and help develop the next generation of SEO rockstars.

TheGypsy, David Harry, has published his annual list of resources for How to Learn SEO in 2008.  Dave breaks down the different methods for learning SEO and provides links to a number of excellent resources within each category.  Included in his ways to learn are: SEO Books, Online Guides, Online Training, Classes, Seminars and Conferences, Blogs, and SEO Forums.  Dave mentions that although these are all great resources, the best way to learn is always hands on experience.  In addition to his list of resources, Dave also posted responses on his blog, Huomah, from fellow industry experts as to how they learned SEO and how they recommend teaching/learning SEO.  If you are looking to get into the industry or just want to fine tune your skill set, take a look at Dave’s post to see if you are missing anything.

If you are having difficultly landing a job and you can’t figure out why, make sure you aren’t going into the interview with a computer mouth.  Frank Reed has summed up this problem in a great post for Marketing Pilgrim titled, R U 2 Casual w Your Biz Talk?  With the growth of instant messaging and txt messaging, many college graduates have end developed a habit of communicating in txtspeak.  Between rushing thank you notes, befriending employers with facebook invites, and using excessive smileys and exclamation points, candidates are ruining their own chances at landing a job by showing an overall immaturity and unprofessionalism.  If your thank you note was forwarded around, Wud U B ?  If so,  keep that in mind when drafting your next note to a potential employer.

That’s it for this week.  Please check back next week for another update.