At a time when many companies and organizations are trying to effectively marshal social media resources to promote their brand and attract talent, National Public Radio (NPR) has put these platforms at the center of its recruitment strategy. Instead of the traditional transactional human resources-driven recruitment strategies, NPR’s approach is to empower current employees to help with outreach efforts and branding. Through multi-channel employment branding campaigns, NPR has built engaged communities across a variety of social media channels – resulting in over $100k/year savings in job boards.
This presentation presents an overview of how to develop social media recruiting strategy, gain organization support, and provides specific results and examples from NPR's social recruiting and employment branding efforts.
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Rethinking Recruitment: Building NPR's Employment Brand
1. Rethinking Recruitment:
Building NPR’s Employment Brand
Lars Schmidt | NPR Senior Director,Talent Acquisition & Innovation | @ThisIsLars
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Tuesday, June 18, 13
2. Foundation
• Recruiting team needed to
be rebuilt from the ground
up
• Lean team, lean resources
• Competing against top
organizations (often for-
profit)
• Need to reach new talent
pools (Tech/Diverse/GenY)
• Strong consumer brand
• Loyal fan following
• Evolving and expanding into
new digital platforms
• Established active social
media channels
• Digital-savvy employee base,
many active social media
users
Recruiting Organization
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3. NPR + Social Media
• @nprnews: 1,804,836
followers
• @NPR: 171,046 followers
• @NPRjobs: 18,314
followers
• NPR Facebook Page:
2,651,703 likes
• This Is NPR Facebook
Page: 63,988 likes
• LinkedIn: 16,852 followers
• Instagram: 244,146
followers
• Foursquare: 13,065
followers
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* Stats as of 6/4/13
Tuesday, June 18, 13
4. Brand Ambassadors
• Leverage NPR’s history, consumer brand, and social media to
build our employment brand & drive talent attraction
• Internal Brand Ambassadors: engage our employees and
encourage them to share their experience (#NPRlife) and
jobs.
• External Brand Ambassadors: consciously cultivate engaged
community of fans interested in careers at NPR through a
variety of social media channels, campaigns, and conversation.
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Tuesday, June 18, 13
5. Building a Social Recruiting Strategy
• Understand your goals and objectives
• Find your internal social media stakeholders
• Step out of HR - identify internal influencers and invest in
those relationships
• Engage your employees and your fans
• Select appropriate SM channels (see next slides)
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Tuesday, June 18, 13
6. Twitter
• @NPRjobs launched July 2011
• 18,000+ followers
• Primary social recruiting
engagement platform
• #7 source of applicants
• #4 source of hire
• Helps NPR reach new
audiences (63% of
followers are under 35)
* Stats as of 6/4/13 AmplifyTalent.com
Tuesday, June 18, 13
8. Why Social?
Excerpt fromWashington Post article: For non-profit NPR, social media is a great equalizer when it comes to hiring.
Social recruiting in action:
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9. Case Study:The Power of a Tweet
Situation:
The volume of applications for our Fall 2011 internships was
below target levels as the deadline approached
Results:
114 RTs, 742,976 impressions, 140 new applicants, 15 hires
Solution:
We extended the application deadline one week and announced
with a single tweet (below)
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Tuesday, June 18, 13
10. #NPRlife
Unfiltered social media posts by NPR employees sharing
their experience across Twitter (6,000+ tweets),
Instagram (1,000+ photos),Vine, and other channels.
* Stats as of 6/4/13 AmplifyTalent.com
Tuesday, June 18, 13
11. LinkedIn
• Utilize employment
branding features
• 16,800+ followers
• 1,442 monthly visitors
• #3 applicant source
channel
• Talent Brand Index: 15
(higher then NewYork Times,
CNN,Washington Post,ABC)
* Stats as of 6/4/13 AmplifyTalent.com
Tuesday, June 18, 13
12. Facebook
• 64,000+ likes
• Collaboration with NPR
Marketing, Branding, and
Communications
• Strong branding channel
• Work4 job sharing
• #8 applicant source
channel
* Stats as of 6/4/13 AmplifyTalent.com
Tuesday, June 18, 13
13. Instagram
• NPR account managed by
editorial team
• 250,000+ followers
• Employment branding content
(1,000+ #NPRlife photos)
* Stats as of 6/4/13 AmplifyTalent.com
Tuesday, June 18, 13
14. YouTube
• NPRjobs: 33 subscribers,
3,707 video views
• High potential, high
investment
• Not yet a focus of NPR
social recruiting strategy
* Stats as of 6/4/13 AmplifyTalent.com
Tuesday, June 18, 13
15. Career Site
• Reinforce culture
• Optimized for mobile
(responsive)
• Media rich (photos,
videos, social media)
• Set applicant
expectations
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Tuesday, June 18, 13
20. Key Takeaways
• Have a strategy and goal before you start. What challenge are
you trying to solve? What is your target outcome?
• Select appropriate channels
• Build relationships with internal stakeholders & influencers
• Activate your employees
• Pilot, start small, scale - important to build internal credibility
• Multi-channel branding: social media, career site, job
descriptions, blogs, conferences, etc
• Listen to your fans, interact with them
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Tuesday, June 18, 13