What does it take to make your recruiting message viral? You want your message, and your opportunities to reach far and wide, particularly when you are hiring in large numbers. There has been plenty of discussion about whether gamification works, and if competitions and games attract players rather than candidates. I understand the critics point of view, but I’ve also seen some great examples that have countered the argument.
Mike Vangel of T.M.P. is an old friend of #Tru, having led a track on U.P.S.’s social recruiting efforts at #truBoston. I also got the opportunity to see him present at the Recruiting Innovation Summit. I have a lot of time for his thinking, and admire that he is very open in sharing the data behind the campaigns. I’m hoping we will be able to tempt him over to London in Feb for #truLondon5. U.P.S. have a great social recruiting story to tell.
Mike spoke to me recently prior to the launch of U.P.S.’s “Road Trip” game on FaceBook, and I’ve been following this closely since the campaign launched on October 10′th.The game finishes on December 16′th, so I thought it was worth making a half time report, and it is so far so good. The game is aimed at recruiting seasonal driver helpers and part-time package handlers.
The concept of the game is that players enter by signing up for the UPS jobs newsletter and by voting for their favourite careers video, and sharing content or inviting friends to take part. The grand prize for the sweepstake, and it is a random draw, will be a gift voucher for Zappos up to the value of $2,000.00, with a weekly draw for a $100 voucher. The prize is up to $2,000 because the pot goes up the more likes the page gets. There’s currently 26,142 fans with the most important number, 782 people talking about it.
I see the “talking about” number on a fan page as being far more important than fan numbers, because this represents how many people are actively engaging with the page, whether its liking, sharing or commenting. 782 is particularly high for a careers page, so the campaign is obviously working.
Mike Vangel
When you first visit the U.P.S. jobs page, the landing page is a countdown clock to the end of the road trip, a promo logo and a button to enter and find out more about U.P.S. Jobs. Once you enter, you are taking to a page with 26 video’s to choose from or vote on, video’s from opportunities for women through to senior managers getting interviewed. Each video has a button to vote for your favourite, and an opt out button to share the video to your wall. This is a great way to promote the full career video catalogue and give potential employees to choose those that closest match their area of interest, from the corporate stuff like diversity, through to individual job types. Checking on the U.P.S. YouTube Channel, the viewing figures have grown considerable since the start of the competition, with the most popular of the video’s topping 5,000 views.
Once you’ve entered, you can invite friends to the sweepstake either via your wall or by invites. You get your friend list and earns another chance in the draw. What I like about this game is that it is simple to follow and enter. From the headlines I have been given by Mike when we spoke last, it has already been very successful at building up the talent network. (A talent network is people signed up for notifications of jobs and updates.) Applications for jobs are well up, both through the campaign and the work4labs application on the U.P.S. Jobs page. Promotion has been entirely through shares, Facebook and Twitter with no paid for media. It has been an undoubted success for U.P.S. in hiring seasonal staff and getting the message out there. Hats off to U.P.S. and Mike Vangel on this campaign.
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I found this blog to be very interesting, and I have passed it along to my colleagues.
My name is Dionne, a San Francisco State University Business Student, and an aspiring recruiter. I am currently working on a class sourcing project for quality part-time workers for physically challenging handler jobs on difficult shifts (late night and early morning) for a large express package delivery firm –where the primary goals are to increase the volume and quality of applicants.
I would sincerely appreciate the help of professional recruiters and I promise to take less than five minutes of your time. Listed below are the current sourcing methods I am considering for this project. Please look them over and select your top five choices with an (*) that you would recommend to source a warehouse position and/or write in with any additional sourcing methods I may be missing.
Recommended Sourcing Tools for Warehouse Positions:
1. Employee referrals
2. The firm’s corporate career website
3. Facebook
4. Google+
5. Twitter
6. LinkedIn
7. Meetup
8. Google
9. Bing
10. Yahoo
11. Boolean String Search
12. Monster
13. Workopolis
14. Indeed
15. ReferYes
16. Pipl
17. CareerBuilder
18. BooleanBar
19. ZoomInfo
20. Jigsaw
21. Recruit candidates from industry competitors
22. Radio advertisements
23. City career fairs
24. College career fairs
25. Newspaper advertisements
26. Magazines
27. Billboard advertisements
28. Job boards
29. Telephone
30. Mobile platform recruiting
31. Recruiting at adult sports events
32. Direct recruiting at college campuses
33. Recruiting through college career centers and school bulletins
34. Advertisements in community career centers and employment offices
35. Television advertisements
36. Online advertisements
37. Job Contests
38. Online Video Applications
Others: ___________________________
Any additional comments or suggestions are welcome and very much appreciated.
Please either respond directly to the discussion board or email your top five sourcing tool choices to dshort@mail.sfsu.edu.
For your benefit, if you do choose to respond I will be happy to send you the results of this survey. I will also be happy to send the results of my project upon its completion, including a repeatable process for identifying these candidates. If you would like to receive these results, please indicate your interest in your response.
Thank you for your time,
Dionne Short
SFSU Business Student
& Aspiring Recruiter
Dionne,
you should seperate out employee referrals and social referrals, @masterburnett can explain my thinking on this, as it is a bit different to his. targeted FB ads would be number 2 for me, connecting to a page for this purpose, followed by youtube video and text messaging (as per UPS). A kind of pass on this text message!
Bill