Social media application has both pros and cons, say experts
Looking to hire a whopping 250,000 workers in the United States for the summer of 2017, McDonald’s tried out a new hiring tool in June with “Snaplications.”
Users of the Snapchat app could view a 10-second ad of restaurant employees talking about the benefits of working at the chain, and then “swipe up” to visit the McDonald’s career web page in Snapchat to apply to local restaurants.
McDonald’s was looking to engage with potential employees in a fun and new way, according to Andrea Abate, manager of media relations at McDonald’s in Chicago.
“Snapchat is the most popular social media platform among high school and college students, with a recent survey reporting that 78 per cent of Gen Zers use the application daily.”
The U.S. campaign followed a Snapchat initiative by McDonald’s in Australia in April. There, users of the multimedia mobile application could use a special lens to see themselves in a McDonald’s uniform, and then could send a 10-second video submission to the McDonald’s Snapchat account. The chain would then send users a link to the digital careers hub and application form.
“Snaplications was born out of the growing desire to enable people to interact with the brand on their own terms, in their own time and in an enjoyable way,” said Shaun Ruming, COO of McDonald’s Australia, in a release.
“For most young people… this is their first entry into the workforce. As such, their personality, positive attitude and enthusiasm are characteristics that are focused on and traits that this tech innovation captures in a simple, yet effective manner.”
Companies have been using Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to connect with the public for a number of years, but Snapchat is becoming a top app for people under 25, who use it several times each day, said Nicolas Roulin, associate professor of psychology at St. Mary’s University in Halifax.
So if you are an employer looking to hire younger people, talking to them through an app they use and appreciate is probably a good strategy, he said.
“You’re not going to recruit your next CEO using social media, but if you’re looking for entry-level positions that are likely filled by more junior individuals, maybe less-experienced people, and most of them will be in the age range using social media or Instagram or some other social media more, then you can go for it,” said Roulin. “You want to do your homework and check what type of population is using the social media the most.”
“McDonald’s was probably looking for high school or college students who wanted to get a summer job, for instance... so Snapchat is probably the smart move. If you’re looking for a 30-year-old IT engineer, I’m not sure Snapchat is the best way to go.”
Social media for recruitment can be easy to use and it’s relatively cheap compared to more traditional tools, he said.
“If you choose the right one and you use the right message, you can target specific types of job applicants, for instance, and then talk to your preferred audience in a direct way, which is not something you can do if you just put a job ad on a recruitment website like Monster.ca.”
Shopify captures videos
Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify decided to use Snapchat in the summer of 2016 when it was looking for someone to join its social media team. Interested applicants could record a Snapchat “story” that threaded together their quick snaps into a comprehensive story of their day, totalling anywhere from 30 seconds to three minutes.
Applicants were then asked to submit the video along with their resumé.
“These candidates were structuring a narrative to tell us about themselves, so it was a really a cool viewing experience being in the social discipline and then from the TA (talent acquisition) team’s perspective,” said Dan Fricker, head of social at Shopify in Toronto.
“Snapchat was just percolating to the surface as a primary marketing channel for brands so we thought, ‘What better way to find the best talent out there to join our team than to use this new, emerging channel?’ And vetting through them was really fun… we really saw such a range of people with incredibly diverse backgrounds and skill sets that were all able to surface to the top through this first-person, storytelling experience.”
Some entries were more rehearsed and scripted, while others were more off the cuff, “skewing more to the raw side,” he said.
“And I wouldn’t say one necessarily was better than the other. We just wanted to get a sense of who these people were, what they cared about, what their mission was for their career and specifically with social media, and if it aligned with the Shopify mission.”
And while Snapchat is popular with younger people, there was a diverse range of respondents, said Fricker, with one applicant ultimately winning the job.
“It wasn’t an attempt to get someone younger, by any means. We’re open to all different types of ages, skill sets, backgrounds — that’s what really makes us the strongest is diversity of different thoughts, and that can extend to previous work experience, previous life experience — age or otherwise.”
Using the tool could also help with employer branding, he said.
“We’re a company that’s at the forefront of the evolution of commerce, so I’d like to think that we already have a degree of reputation of being on the cusp of new technology. But a campaign like this, and our use of it, hopefully drives that home.”
Potential downsides
Recruiter Angela Bortolussi has used Snapchat, usually to promote a client at a career fair using short videos. And while that did provide an inside look at the team and their opportunities, compared to images on a website, she has her doubts about the tool.
“If someone was really focused maybe on campus recruiting, it would make sense for them, going to career fairs and things like that, because sometimes these career fairs have different snap filters that entice people to use Snapchat, but unless you’re at an event… it doesn’t make sense,” said Bortolussi, a partner at recruiting services company Recruiting Social in Los Angeles.
While there has been a lot of hype around the tool, there are definite challenges, she said. For one, it means employers and recruiters have to publicize it on another platform, and then try to get people to switch over to the Snapchat application.
“Most of the time, your applicant is on their mobile phone looking for jobs or they’re browsing through on their laptop… so pulling them from another platform was a little bit difficult. And you could kind of track in some ways but you can’t really track to see what amount of users is going to check out your Snapchat unless you’re looking at individual users by scrolling and looking at all the people viewing your stories. It’s really difficult to track the ROI (return on investment) in Snapchat when it comes to recruitment.”
It’s also challenging when people use different user names for different platforms, and it’s not easy to identify people by their user names on Snapchat, said Bortolussi.
With Instagram, on the other hand, it’s easier to identify people and they post both pictures and videos at the same time, so engagement is better. Instagram also allows for hashtags, which makes for easier tracking, she said.
“I know recruiters last year were really on the bandwagon of testing (Snapchat) out and working with it but, just like any tool, if you’re not really repetitive with it, it goes at the bottom and most just didn’t see the ROI in using it. It might work for other businesses to push out content and get people engaged but from a recruitment standpoint, it doesn’t seem like it worked very well for most of us.”
“When it comes to using these tools, there’s a lot of trial and error — that’s the beauty of it.”
