If you’re not already familiar, Snapchat is a messaging app that lets you take a photo or video, layer it with text, doodles or filters, and send to your friends. They can view your snap for up to 10 seconds before it magically disappears.
If you’re looking to recruit and hire socially active, digitally minded candidates, Snapchat is a fantastic tool to have in your recruiting toolbox. Here are just a few ways that forward-thinking companies are using the app to improve their talent pool.
Geotarget Colleges for Top-Notch Interns
Where do you usually find your interns? Job boards, college employment offices, campus recruiting events?
Agency Space150 used Snapchat’s on-demand geofilter feature to hunt for interns across 29 college campuses. (A paid service, geofilters let you create an overlay that users within a designated geographic area can view and put on top of their snaps.)
Space150’s geofilter asked students to follow them on Snapchat to receive a creative brief that would serve as their internship application. Their task: create a Snapchat Story for one of the agency’s brands in the year 2020.
The campaign was a resounding success. Filters were viewed 23K times and used 6K times, with 115 actual applicants who completed the task and “applied” via Snapchat Stories.
Find Talent Where It Works
When agency 180LA wanted to fill a social media manager role, it only made sense that it’d find its perfect candidate on social media. Like Space150, the company created special geofilters to target people in the area.
But there was one major difference: 180LA’s geofilters targeted people who were already employed at competing agencies, in addition to employees in the West Coast HQs of Google, Facebook and BuzzFeed. People within the boundary of those offices could view open positions, application instructions and even take a mini tour of their “new” workplace.
The filters themselves had a great sense of humor, teasing employees with captions like “180 Reasons Why You Should Hit Us Up” (targeted at Buzzfeed), “Work Somewhere You Can Pronounce” (targeted at Pereira & O’Dell) and “Same Hustle, Better View” (targeted at R/GA).
Curious employees took the bait, with over 40 job inquiries within the first day. This little bit of friendly talent poaching was all thanks to Snapchat.
Be on the Lookout for Creative Candidates
Employers aren’t the only ones using geofilters. Candidates are using them too, and searching their Snapchat presences is a great way to pinpoint talent.
Take Erik Sena, for example: The 22-year-old ad school grad set up his own geofilter featuring his name and desired job title (copywriter) in a fun, branded font. Then, he targeted agencies in San Diego and Los Angeles during the work day, with an added target of Playa Vista to capture attention during the lunch hour.
His story picked up quite a bit of attention, from the agencies he targeted in addition to the press.
If someone like Erik catches your eye, be prepared to jump through a few more hoops to get in touch. Unlike LinkedIn, where you’re able to see education, work history and contact info, Snapchat is a platform of few words and vanishing images. You may have to Google your candidate or hunt them down on other platforms like Twitter or Facebook in order to make that first connection.
How to Do It
Ready to make the jump into Snapchat recruiting?
Your first step: Download the app and get familiar with the platform.
Then make sure you have a job listing set up via the Mediabistro Employers page, where you can send candidates to get more info.
You’ll find great talent in a snap!
Topics:
Best Practices
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