Bebo is the new tool of the trade picked by Construction Skills to attract teenagers to the building services sector.
This year ConstructionSkills' 'Positive Image' recruitment drive has moved from TV adverts and printed media, to promote the industry on social networking site Bebo.

The sector skills council has paid for online search terms and banner ads to reach its target audience of 11-19year-olds.

Bebo, with its 'Blog Early, Blog Often' motto, has attracted more than 12million site users in the UK and more than one third are under the age of 24.

ConstructionSkills, the sector skills council for construction, enlisted the help of young people working in construction to be 'construction ambassadors', by developing their own pages, encouraging online chat about working in the industry and giving true to life responses to site visitors' questions.

Search sites like Google, MSN and Yahoo, are also driving traffic to ConstructionSkills careers web site, with more than 96,000 visits to either www.bconstructive.co.uk or the Bebo profile in the first two weeks of the campaign going live.

'Digital media is a very cost effective way of reaching this audience and because we see results in real-time, we can make changes to the campaign based on what's working', said Nicola Thompson, ConstructionSkills director of communications & marketing.

'Working with our Construction ambassadors, we have to encourage the really positive discussion threads about working in construction and manage the postings which reinforce the stereotypical views about the industry'

To check out one construction ambassador's Bebo profile, visit 'ConstructionGirl121' at www.bebo.com/positiveimage.