Social media websites like Facebook and del.icio.us have simplified the way we share information. Hiring companies have begun using these tools to recruit you in ways you might not expect.
This article is brought to you by RecruitmentRevolution.com, the UK's leading online recruitment specialist.
Nowadays, if you have an ad to put out, your best hope is for it to go viral and spread across the social networks like wildfire. Why pay for advertising when people are happily spreading your message for you?
Enter Viral Recruitment
A company wants to hire the best and brightest at the lowest price. For that, they need to come off as ultra-hip, and their offices as uber-cool. The result:
From over 800 comments on this video, this reaction sums it up best:
“Okay, two questions:
1. Where do you people work?
2. Can I have a job?”
Why does this ad work so well?
Good mood: the happiness of the clip is infectious and draws you in.
Message: You'll enjoy working at that company because it's so much fun.
Good song: the tune is catchy and stays in your head, raising the chance that you'll mention the clip to someone else.
Message: You'll like the company so much, you'll rave about it to friends.
Good tone: the clip doesn't seem like an ad. There's no voiceover and the company's name isn't even mentioned in the video, but it is prominent on the video's homepage.
Message: The company won't be in your face all the time making unfair demands on your personal time.
Good setting: you get what seems like a complete tour of the company's sunny offices and executive lounge.
Message: Your last job also had a ping-pong table and beer, right? This is a great place to work.
Good production: although it has some off-balance “reality” camera work, the video is actually very slick, well-lit and well-executed. Message: the company will provide the right tools for you to get your job done.
Good people: so many people are involved in the clip, and each plays their part well.
Message: The company is one big team working as a unit but just like the guy at the end who can find his place among colleagues, so will you.
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I don’t know if I want to work for a place where there are only young hip people.
I dunno about that video – do those people actually work there? Seems like they hired a bunch of hipster models and semi-coreographed the whole thing. I thought those big spacious offices with such attypical business practices like drinking beer and playing ping-pong in the office, which is completely populated by twenty-somethings, vanished during the tech-bust. Am I wrong? If not, sign me up, too!
Josh – come on, don’t be an old fart! But you do have a point. Only young people = lack of leaders with experience. Doesn’t sound like a viable business to me.
josh – why not?
Ilan – at least some of the main lip dubbers do seem to work there based on their Vimeo profile pages. And no, not all atypical business practices like office beer vanished with the Bubble. You should what goes on at Google, but that’s a very extreme example.
As for youth- remember, some people define experience as just knowing all the ways to fail. Take that as you want.
To remove all doubt, I just had a quick chat with the CEO of the company, Josh Abramson.
It’s real 🙂
OK – I officially eat my words. Sign me up! 🙂
It was partly meant to be a humourous Abraham Simpson’s saying, but now that I think about it,
young people usually have no life other than work or play. Since the alternative to work is either vacation (need money) or going out (need money), then they can stay at the office late and be with the other cool people at work. This creates a certain ‘work late’ ethic or putting in hours that family people might not be able, or frankly interested in putting in.
On a project I’m involved in now (that is not running behind schedule, yet), I was told that someone worked until five in the morning last week and another who came in on Sunday. This bothers me. Both screwed up their weekend and this will affect their whole week, and frankly, I don’t know if they were too productive either.
I first started working at a young office. It was fun, (no google perks though) but everyone enjoyed the pressure together, no one felt the need to leave at 5 or even 7pm. In any case, they couldn’t. Because they were staying up late, they came in late. So if someone else would want to leave at 6pm, they were leaving early.