9 minute read
Recruitment and Social Media
Social Media w/ RedSeven & Promotions Company Recruitment and
RECRUITMENT ATITUDE
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ack in March, when B the world went into lockdown and we were thrown into a realm of uncertainty and panic, we had a lot of reconfiguring to do. One of the main areas of the business that we immediately had to reformat was recruitment. We soon realised that despite having to base ourselves at home and press pause on some of our partnerships with clients, one of the things that we could focus on was sourcing brilliant people with whom to move the business forward when things lifted. Here’s how we did it...
RESPONSE TO LOCKDOWN - ATTITUDE Rob Cotterell from RedSeven explained how they ‘looked at lockdown a little differently to some companies. When things came to a grinding halt, a lot of our team had the mentality of, ‘there’s a silver lining in this and it could be recruitment’’. Sourcing the right people is a big part of Direct Sales and given that they knew there were going to be a lot of skilled people that had been made redundant or lost their jobs, they looked at the situation as an opportunity to find some fantastic new people to grow the organisation. Kevin Nash from Promotions Company describes how being thrown into such unprecedented territory ‘forced us to work harder than we’ve worked before, and that itself has injected a new lease of life into the business; we’re coming at things with a new energy, an alternative approach and new ideas of how to develop as an organization’. Drastic times don’t always call for drastic measures; in fact, adopting a calm and measured approach to the chaos that was descending upon the world was probably what enabled the team to find their feet and successfully adapt to the situation. So what was their process during lockdown and how did they manage the recruitment process online?
PROCESS
PART 1: Development of Current Team in Order to make Way for New Recruits In order to make way for new recruits, the initial focus was on upskilling the existing members of the team. The team found themselves in a pretty unique position in that, as a result of the frontline sales work coming to a halt, everybody’s day-to-day schedules were cleared and they could hone in on a purely skills-based development regime. Instead of looking at the first few weeks as having ‘nothing to do’, the guys saw an opportunity to essentially go ‘back to school’ and upskill the entire organisation:
‘Having the opportunity to really focus on training the guys was a huge silver lining to this period. Normally, we don’t have the time to be out in the field and continue our training; it had become more of a ‘learn as you work’ development programme and whilst there are definitely benefits to that in terms of character building and directly engaging with the public, having the chance to strip it all back and go ‘back to school’ was a real benefit to us all’. (Rob)
- KEV NASH -
Every single day, they were running Zoom calls with different levels of the business. At one stage, they were running 5 or 6 separate Zoom meetings per day, so the training itself became the centre of the business for the first few weeks. They had guest speakers from across the country running sales topics, leadership topics as well as hosts from India, America, Australia. Not only was this hugely beneficial in terms of learning from a vast array of professionals, but having the chance to engage with speakers from all over the world helped to puncture the feeling of ‘isolation’ that would now and then rise to the surface. There’s something about realising that everyone is in the same boat, globally, that helps you to harness a sense of perspective. Kev tells me how, ‘the online training programme that (they) developed helped everybody to establish a sense of structure and routine to their days, and was a fantastic opportunity to reconfigure aspects of the organization that we perhaps hadn’t had the chance to do in a while’. For example, Rob started to record his presentations online, meaning that he was able to send these recordings out to people to study in their own time. They now have what is essentially an archive of presentational footage that can be used as a resource for training new recruits in the future.
PART 2: Moving Recruitment Online After the initial stage of upskilling the existing team was well in motion, the team began their online recruitment process. Throughout the whole of lockdown, they focussed on placing adverts online, reaching out to people that they thought might be interested in a career change: ‘we made sure that we were absolutely on the front foot during those first few weeks’. They knew we wouldn’t be able to run the business in the same way as before, so instead of simply watching their clients drop away and feeling helpless, they quickly adapted to the situation and made the most of their time out of the field to focus on building a strong network of new team members. They saw an opportunity in that there would be a broader demographic of people looking for new careers and focussed their efforts on that. Kev ensured that they were reaching out to people on a variety of platforms - Facebook / Instagram / LinkedIn - and adapted the social media content in a
way that placed recruitment at the forefront of the organisation. ‘We knew that we would be missing out on our usual student intake due to the fact that both Bristol Universities had closed down and people wouldn’t be in a position to take on graduate schemes etc., so we tried to focus more on actively reaching out to people rather than waiting for them to seek us out’.
They decided to start reaching out to interns on Instagram and headhunting people from other industries via social media. Once they had pulled together a strong list of potential employees, they began the interview process. This was all done over Zoom, which despite feeling initially quite reductive in the sense that you aren’t able to interact with your interviewee in person, actually ended up being a much more time-productive method of recruitment: ‘It has saved us a lot of time in the long run. We’ve managed to streamline the business in that sense and have realised that recruiting online is perhaps the way forward which is interesting’ (Rob). Kev, on the other hand, certainly missed the faceto-face aspect of the recrtuiment process and explains how it’s not just about what happens during the formal interview:
‘We’re such a people-facing business, you know, the relationship building process begins in our reception space as we welcome people in; it’s sort of like we’re hosting a party and the recruits are our guests, so it’s been difficult not having a physical space to welcome people into. It’s in those first 10 minutes or so that you make connections and you get to know people when they’re a little more relaxed, so we’re very much aware that not all aspects of the recruitment process have translated over Zoom.’
PART 3: Stepping back into the field In June, when the restrictions started to lift somewhat, the team were able to start holding their first batch of face-to-face recruitment sessions in-person. These have been in groups of just 3 people at a time in order to adhere to social distancing and masks and hand-sanitiser are provided. After such a long period of isolation, it probably feels a little bizarre for people to enter the work space again, especially for interviews. Rob explains continued --->
how it’s important ‘to make sure that everyone feels comfortable being in that environment again, but at the end of the day we are face-to-face specialists and it was brilliant to get back to working together in person once more. That’s what we’re good at and what we love about this Industry’.
how it’s important ‘to make sure that everyone feels comfortable being in that environment again, but at the end of the day we are face-toface specialists and it was brilliant to get back to working together in person once more. That’s what we’re good at and what we love about this Industry’.
SOCIAL MEDIA AS A COACHING TOOL & PLATFORM FOR RECRUITMENT
Kev and Promotions Company Seeing as there hasn’t been an opportunity to get together and to attend events etc., Kev has had to move the social media of the organisation in a slightly different direction. Instead of posting photos and coverage of meetings and milestones, he decided to use the platform as an additional resource for coaching and training purposes. He explains how they ‘started pushing the social media side of the business in January, focussing on Instagram in particular as a tool for personal development’. They invested in a series of professionally filmed videos to release as more of an educational resource, as opposed to simply using IG as a way of promoting the company. It wasn’t without its challenges, after all ‘there are only so many zoom screenshots that you can post!’ (Kev), but they found a way to adapt their social media presence to meet the needs of their viewers in the best way possible. ‘We’ve had to be quite creative in terms of sustaining our online presence, so I’ve been posting links to books and podcasts, links to resources that people might find useful to study in their own time, graphics instead of photographs...things like that’.
One of Kev’s other goals back in January was to start using social media, in particular Instagram, as a tool to widen the recruitment pool. Prior to lockdown, they had been gearing up to launch a landing page from IG to the website to link people to recruitment information and this is something that they are looking forward to setting up over the coming weeks. Using things like hashtags is a fantastic way to connect with a broader audience and social media really is paving the way for a more contemporary version of recruitment.
You can check out their social media pages via: @thepromotionsco @redsevenmarketing
