How to make an exponential success of your recruitment viral

Do you want to increase the number of visitors to your recruitment website? Do you want to get more, or at least better, applications? Launch a viral recruitment campaign! Learn from the cases of Reed Business and Tele2. What made their virals become such huge successes?

Vital marketing is a well-known marketing tool. It can also be a very successful tool for online recruitment. The idea behind a viral is that you promote a product or concept and trigger the target group to send the information through to friends, family or colleagues, the word of mouth principle.

Lately, in the Netherlands, we have seen popular online recruitment virals by Reed Business and Tele2. How have they executed their campaign and what is the secret to their success?

Tele2 recruitment viral: You are fired!?!

Tele2 needed to occupy 50 positions in special areas such as technique and sales. The company created the ‘Top 50 Jobs’ website www.top50leukstebanen.nl. But how to attract visitors to the website?

Tele2 created a print campaign and treated commuters on train stations to snacks with a stimulating message. Next to that Tele2 developed a viral around head hunter Bob Schwarz with the message ‘get hired before you are fired’. Tele2 promoted the viral through mailings, postings on websites, on blogs and on Hyves.

The results of this viral

According to Tele2, the viral was a huge success:

• 3 times as many visitors on the recruitment websites
• Doubling of incoming resumes
• Better quality of resumes
• All 50 available positions have been fulfilled

Remco Meerstra, Corporate & Business Communications Executive of Tele2 got positive reactions on the viral: “We wanted to call up an emotion. The commercial had to be rude, but with a wink. Fortunately visitors seemed to understand the wink.”

Reed Business viral campaign: Days fly by

Reed Business created no less than two recruitment virals. The first, ('Maak jij straks naam') was a stand-alone campaign to quickly recruit sales professionals. The campaign also addressed the recipient personally, using their own name. Christel Lammertink, Manager Corporate Communications at Reed Business explains: “If something is about you, it draws your attention and you will want to share this with others.” The campaign has just ended.

The result of this viral

Then, Reed Business developed its new award-winning recruitment website www.werkenbijreedbusiness.nl. To launch this website successfully, a new viral was being created: www.dedagkruiptvoorbij.nl. A wink to the real message: do you want your days to fly by? Come work with Reed Business. Not just the viral effect was successful. Reed Business placed a new funny tip every day, which resulted in many returning visitors.

The results of this viral

The success was enormous. Christel Lammertink tells: “We got 1.3 million visitors and 1.000 resumes. Moreover, Reed Business made name as a popular employer. This also led to internal company pride!”

Why launch a viral campaign?

Let’s start with the risks or disadvantages of creating a viral:

• High ‘hot or not’ risk
• Hard to reach your specific target group
• High costs involved in having a creative agency develop a professional campaign

Now the opportunities and advantages:

• Possibly a huge, exponential (word of mouth) success
• Immediate results visible in number of visitors and resumes
• Save money on e-mail marketing or print campaigns

Tips & tricks

If you have decided to create a viral recruitment campaign, take advantage of the following tips and tricks:

• Call up an emotion: fun, surprise, recognition. Be distinctive
• Personalise the campaign (use names)
• Be careful for negative emotions
• Make the campaign worth sharing, provide an advantage (e.g. every day a new tip)
• Launch the campaign passionately. Promote it in the media, through bloggers and in social networks
• Link the campaign to a website, make sure this transition is as seamless as possible: maintain the same feeling / environment
• Make use of the e-mail addresses you collect

The secret to truly successful online recruitment

But keep in mind, an exciting viral campaign will never be successful if you don’t have your recruitment website up to par.

Read more on this in the following articles:
9 valuable tips to save money on online recruitment
Benefits of using video for online recruitment
Firms miss opportunities for online recruitment