Readers of this blog will have been following the progress reports on the social recruiting project for the opening of Hard Rock Firenze. (Florence). This has been conducted entirely via a Facebook fan page,mashed in with a few other on-line tools over a 4 week period
. First the results:
: 10,222 fans on the page. (In 4 weeks!)
: 4000 job applications received (During a 2 week campaign.)
: 600 interviews completed (over 3 days)
: 120 Hires
The project had 2 objectives:
1: To create a buzz around the opening of the new Hard Rock Cafe in Firenze
2: To recruit 120 staff in 8 categories from waiting staff to accounting.
Pre-launch planning showed 1,900 profiles for people that:
1: Liked Rock and Roll
2: Lived within 100km of Firenze
3: Had some hospitality, catering or bar work in their background.
4:Spoke fluent Italian.
This was the basis of a Facebook ad campaign announcing the opening and invitation to be a fan that had a higher than average click-through rate. It was clear from the early sign-ups, 1000 on day one, that the majority were within the target group. The welcome page was built at low-cost, using pagemodo, with 2 pictures of the venue and 3 of typical Hard Rock staff from other venues, under the heading:
“For those about to rock we recruit you!
” Visitors then oet 2 choices, to either connect for news of the opening or apply for work via the work for us tab from Work4Labs. Interestingly, 50% of the fans applied for jobs, vindicating the decision to integrate the job application in to the venue fan page rather than building a separate careers page. I’m convinced this impacts on sign ups. My thinking is that working candidates are not comfortable liking careers pages orrecruitment sites, sharing the news that they may be looking with anyone watching. They are comfortable signing up for a “branded” site that gives no indication that they are looking. This iswhere the Work4Labs app comes in to it’s own. It’s simple to use for applying or sharing. (Interestingly the most liked job was for a finance assistant!)
Applications were open for 2 weeks only with a start and end date posted on the wall. What has been noticable throughout the whole project has been the high level of engagement between fans over the application process. No sooner had questions about any part of the process been posted on the wall, than another fan answered or offered help and encouragement. Candidates were encouraged to apply in Italian or English, whichever they were most comfortable with.
At the close of the application process, (15’th March) , a teamof recruiters and hiring managers from the UK and italy spent 3 days going through every application. The pledge was that every application would be read by a person and the decision over who to see would not be made by an A.T.S. It’s a painstaking task, but when your recruiting to culture rather than skill-set, a critical one. 700 candidates were invited to attend an interview. this mamoth communication was made simple by running the interviews as an event, using event platform Eventbrite. 20 tickets were made available per hour from 9.00 am – 7.00 PM over 3 days. All candidates were sent one instruction mail with a link to eventbrite. On booking a ticket, they were sent instructions, a map and a ticket by mail. (Eventbrite even sent out a reminder the day before each interview day!). The back-end produced an hourly schedule, you can even print name badges and communicate with candidates directly via mail chimp.It’s free as well as theres no fee for tick Despite the volume of candidates, only 15 people requested additional information or communication by e-mail. All other enquiries were answered mostly by other fans on the wall.
In the down time between the close of the application process and the start of the interviews, the italian managment team broadcast several live discussions about the interview process and working for Hard Rock. Livestream proved to be the perfect app for this process, allowing for streaming on the fan-page, sending invites to fans, and allowing them to postquestions on the wall, up to and during the streaming. This is the perfect app for this purpose, and I would expect this to become a regular feature of social recruiting via Facebook, as well as a great way to connect with fans on a more human level, without leaving the fanpage.
600 candidates took part in a 3 stage interview during the 3 days, first aimed at culture match followed by job fit. After this marathon effort, the 120 people were hired with a good reserve list for any drop outs. Theres also plenty of additional candidates in the database for future opportunities. The unsuccesful applicants have all been invited to attend the cafe after opening, and will get a drink and a welcome on presentation of their interview ticket. As they are all fans, theres also a ready made talent pool for future recruiting, and despite having to decline 3,880 applications, there are very few negative commentson the wall. Mostly its thanks for considering me, please consider me again in the future. Good luck to the lucky candidates. The succesful candidates have also beenposting the good news on the wall, one even saying “I will be ready to serve you from the 7’th May!”. All these announcments are applauded with likes and comments. It hasn’t all gone smoothly, but what is clear in using this mediumis that you can pick up and react toproblems quickly just by monitoring the comments on the wall, and when you put your hands up and apologise, without going in to excuses, the fans forgive you quickly. The next step is to invite all the succesful candidates to join an employee page, where they can be kept up to date on the progress of the building work and start networking, ready for on-boarding.
I’mnot sure o fa similar project of this volume or time-scale that has been conducted elsewhere, but there can’t be many. Well done to everyone in the Hard rock team who put all the real work in to the sifting and interviewing, and to Alison McCue in paticular who put her neck on theline in championing social recruiting, and went about making it happen. We always knew it wasn’t a risk! (Honestly 🙂 )
I will be sharing this story at #truAmsterdam on the 28’th/29’th Aprilin the Facebook recruiting track. If you can make it, come and hear it first hand!
Bill
PS: My friend Katharine Robinson (@TheSourceress), a great friend to #tru is conducting a 30 second survey on C.V.’s/resumes. Please take half a minute to add your thoughts HERE
. Links
Thanks for documenting this Bill. Are you able to offer a comparison against another Hard Rock location where a new Cafe opening was supported by more traditional candidate attraction? Be interested in the commercial aspects (i.e. cost savings!)
You’d have to ask Alison for the exact figures. I can tell you that the set up cost was around £900.00. the bigger costs were the links from FB ads (though this was quite low) in comparison to traditional ad-spend. Time costs are high whichever method you use, though we stripped out lots of admin time in the communication process and interview booking.
The spend forecast v what has been spent in the past is estimated at a tenth.
Bill
Well done for sharing this, Bill. It really is interesting how you built interest around the brand and how you were able to use tools such as Eventbrite to help manage the process. I think it was ballsy of Hard Rock to do this in Facebook as employers tend to keep the recruitment process hidden (I wonder why?!). A great example of low cost and high engagement content used to drive recruitment. Thanks again for sharing.
Thanks Martin,
It was ballsy to risk such an important project in Facebook, but the brand kind of lends itself to social. I think most companies miss the link between a ready built fan base and potential employees, but its quite logical really.
Bill
Interesting, very interesting. Am intrigued to know how much the FB advertising did cost, considering the pull a new Hard Rock opening would have in any case?
Wonder how much attraction and engagement would have been created without it?
Hi Mark,
Thanks for commenting, you know I have been inspired to be imaginative by some of your work. You have shared some great examples yourself.
The opening would have attracted candidates without the ads I’m sure. The point of doing this was not about volume.Because the campaign was open over a strict 2 week period the ad’s were more about announcing the date and making sure everyone was in the right place at the right time.
The other thing the ad achieved was ensuring that there was enough candidates that matched the spec. By targeting the ads on keywords,they brought the right people in the target group, not just people.
Bill
Hi Bill,
Great blog! Thanks for sharing. Do you think social recruiting through Facebook like this lends itself more to volume recruitment as opposed senior hires? I’d be interested to know whether you aware of any of successful, scalable social recruiting methods for senior hires, besides direct sourcing via Linkedin inmail…
Cheers,
Harry
forgot to click “notify me of follow up comments” 🙂
Harry,
Anywhere that the candidates hang out is a great place to start. A few weeks ago I wrote about a twitter campaign that resulted in 27 hires. Some of these were senior.
Equally, you can find and recruit senior people via Facebook. They are usually there.
I’d be glad to have a chat or a coffee and point you in the direction of a few case studies.
Bill
Hi Bill,
many thanks for this brilliant case study…I retweeted it a couple of times!
How did they identify the initial 1900 profiles so accurately?
Laurent
Hi Laurent,
Thanks for sharing the post with a tweet in French.We used the facebook ad tool based on interests, languages and location to identify the 1900 profiles.
It is the best way to check the number of profiles on FB that match the requirement.
Bill
Hi Bill,
That’s a great example – but how will agencies take this? Is this the end of volume recruitment being given to agencies? Are you advocating that fact, given you are promoting this specific example? How can agencies counter this strategy, if at all?
Either way, this type of recruitment cannot work for highly skilled roles or niche markets. Agencies need to strengthen their offerings in these areas, as no doubt social media advocates will be trying to how companies how they can do away with agencies altogether. Surely that’s not something you’d like to see Bill? You are on our side too aren’t you?
Thanks for your questions Sean,
No, it’s not the end of agencies, high volume or otherwise. Each success story however is a wake up call to say that agencies need to be doing much more than posting on job boards, editing c.v’s and waiting.
There will always be a place for specialists. Taking this example though, if Hard Rock were paying fees, then the bill would have been £300k +. The actual bill is less than 1% of this, so it is serious competition which has to be attractive for volume recruitment projects.
Agency recruiters need to get sharper and look at their whole offering. Personally, I think this might end up with a different kind of pricing with add on services, charging for the life of the placment rather than for introduction only. Will post more on this soon.
It’s not over for agencies, far from it, but it is realistic competition and a big threat.
Bill
Thanks Bill – that cetainly adds to the confidence I already had in your views of out industry. Apologies if I sounded a bit harsh, I cant help but stand up for agencies given the fact that my business is all about assisting small agencies in a big way. Your views are very much appreciated by us all over here.. and we look forward to seeing more…
[…] Original post here (pt2) […]
[…] Clearly, Hard Rock is a strong brand ie you know what it stands for and you know what you get when you walk through the door. But that does not necessarily mean that you build a FB page and the right people will come. Create the right type of content and they will come, which is exactly what they did. […]
[…] as a social recruitment platform. A couple of weeks ago, Bill Boorman published the results of his social recruiting project for the opening of Hard Rock Cafe in Florence, which was centred around a Facebook fan page that attracted over 10,000 fans and received 4,000 […]
[…] the entire campaign is well documented by Bill Boorman in his “The Recruiting Unblog,” below is a quick synopsis of how they did […]
[…] [To read the whole case study – see how Bill Boorman created and delivered the project for Hard Rock here] […]
[…] Le Viet A good case study about the use of the Work for Us app in the retail space:http://recruitingunblog.wordpres…This answer .Please specify the necessary improvements. Edit Link Text Show answer summary […]
[…] case ook even hier door te nemen.Deze case is gebaseerd op de informatie uit het interview en de blog van Bill Boorman hierover.In het kort: hoe werf je binnen 2 weken met een budget van $ 200 zo’n 120 kandidaten […]
[…] of course Bill Boorman, the mastermind behind the #TRU events, who recently helped Hard Rock Cafe recruit 120 employees in 4 weeks via Facebook and who held the first in-house #TRU at Oracle in […]
Great idea that combine recruitment and marketing of an event. a best practice for all marketeers.
I have heard that some people recruit for the music industry by Twitter looking at how many followers users have
[…] street” agencies, or place an ad in the local press, even on a job board. The Hard Rock took a different approach and used Facebook to reach out and recruit. It built a community around the new venue opening. Hard […]
[…] ▼Hard Rock Firenze Part 3: 120 Hires In 4 Weeks using #SocialRecruiting https://recruitingunblog.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/hard-rock-firenze-part-3-120-hires-in-4-weeks-soci… […]
[…] especially. Hard Rock Café managed recruiting for its recently opened Florence, Italy location entirely through Facebook, staffing the store cost-effectively and creating a positive user experience and affinity for the […]
[…] Boorman about the Hard Rock Cafe Firenze recruiting campaign: 120 hires in 4 weeks via Facebook. This will certainly be one of the case studies he will mention […]
Its like you read my mind! You appear to know so much about this, like you wrote the book in it or something.
I think that you can do with a few pics to drive the message home a little bit, but other than that, this
is magnificent blog. An excellent read. I will definitely be back.
[…] Clearly, Hard Rock is a strong brand ie you know what it stands for and you know what you get when you walk through the door. But that does not necessarily mean that you build a FB page and the right people will come. Create the right type of content and they will come, which is exactly what they did. […]