Tweet for a Job: 2010 IMA winner
CATEOGORY: New Media
SECOND-PLACE CAMPAIGN: Tweet for a Job
AGENCY: BFG Communications
CLIENT: BFG Communications
There’s no doubt that this challenging employment environment requires plenty of creativity on the part of job seekers. So when BFG Communications went in search of a new assistant content manager with social media skills, it took no chances that the candidate would fit the bill.
Applicants were asked to Tweet their job applications to @BFGC.com. Resumes, cover letters, e-mails not accepted. Just 140 characters to get the point across about who they were and what they had that other applicants did not.
To spread word of the job opening, BFG used its Twitter feed and blog, and also posted an ad on the social media guide www.Mashable.com.
More than 150 “applications” were received. The responses were as far ranging as the jobseekers themselves and showed real ingenuity. Some Tweets linked to video submissions and blog posts. One applicant created a Web site about why she alone should be hired.
Sloane Kelley, the content director for BFG, looked at all of the tweets, checked out the links and profiles and posted the top favorites on the BFG blog so other applicants could get the idea of what was working in the application process. She also responded to each applicant, a novelty to receive such notification for many of those searching for jobs today.
“We wanted it to be a very transparent hiring process by highlighting the people that had done a good job and perhaps the result of that would be that people could go and read through the things that we liked and see who they were up against,” Kelley said.
Of all the Tweets, Hal Thomas reached the top of the pile to be hired last November for the job. He did a TwitPic of his face on the cover of “Wired Magazine” that included some humorous quotes and a link to his personal blog.
“Not only is he creative, but his blog is very impressive and he’s writing about the things that we’re thinking about all the time,” she said. “He hit the ground running and we got him working on a lot of different projects. He is awesome.”
The job search caught the attention of MSNBC and the New York Post, along with hundreds of blog and Twitter mentions. BFG’s Twitter followers jumped 30%.
Because the Twitter job search worked so well, Kelley recently hired another assistant content manager through the same process.
“It served a great purpose,” she said. “I didn’t just want to get the cover letter and resume. It also speaks to the flexibility of Twitter that it’s a platform that is not limiting. It might only have 140 characters, but there’s a lot that you can do with it. —Patricia Odell
