The Challenge
Inspiring Interns were selected by the media company Northern & Shell to manage a hiring drive for their main magazine publication. OK! Magazine was looking to hire 18 people across a variety of creative roles, including content writing and management, design, planning and social media.
Because OK! is such an iconic brand, the client wanted to include significant brand building and awareness within the campaign, in order to source applicants who actively engaged with and understood the publication. OK! Magazine emphasised that successful candidates must not only have strong creative skills but the passion and drive that typifies all members of their team.
The Strategy
As sourcing engaged candidates was essential to the client, Inspiring Interns ensured OK! Magazine branding took prominence at all times. By utilising rich media email campaigns and creating bespoke branded content, Inspiring Interns looked to improve the receptiveness of high calibre candidates over and above that expected from direct response alone.
Because it was so important that any shortlisted candidates were a cultural fit with OK! Magazine, Inspiring Interns took the time to gain a deep understanding of the client’s needs and requirements. They then used extensive candidate profiling to ensure that all candidates recommended to the client were a perfect match.
Moreover, with specific technical and soft skills top of the client’s wish list, Inspiring Interns looked to target a different sort of graduate, broadening their outreach away from the more traditional universities and courses.
To fit OK! Magazine’s detailed specifications, Inspiring Interns needed to look outside of their usual targeted candidates. Consequently, they instigated contact with some key creative colleges and universities around the country to drive applications from some of the most creative young designers and writers around. On top of this, Inspiring Interns utilised existing university contacts to target graduates from creative courses, along with those earmarked as interested in the industry through engagement with a variety of university publications.
Inspiring Interns also promoted the roles across their job board, including a rotating featured spot on the front page of their website. With brand building crucial to the campaign, Inspiring Interns made sure that at every point the OK! Magazine brand was at the core of their promotion. To complement this, Inspiring Interns worked closely with the client to ensure that their in-house copywriters created job profiles that were both attractive to candidates and successfully conveyed OK! Magazine’s employer brand. This helped to ensure that all applicants understood and were invested in the company they were applying to to work for.
Finally, Inspiring Interns arranged for a two-day homepage takeover to promote the roles, involving a re-skinning of their site. For this Inspiring Interns created comprehensive collateral material, working with key figures in the OK! Magazine team to conduct interviews and portray a deep understanding of the company culture and environment. This same collateral was utilised across the Inspiring Interns blog and social media to further promote the opportunity to a wider audience.
The Results
Inspiring Interns succeeded in supplying the full complement of 18 members of staff for the OK! Magazine team, displaying huge payoff from an extensive and original campaign. Inspiring Interns achieved a highly competitive cost per application, which came from almost 3,000 applicants across the various roles.
Moreover, the extensive brand awareness campaign that ran side by side ensured these applicants were engaged with OK! Magazine and actively interested in everything the company was doing.
Inspiring Interns presented the client with a longlist of very strong candidates. OK! Magazine were able to utilise these candidates’ video CVs – an innovative approach to the recruitment process that Inspiring Interns have pioneered since 2009 – to select the applicants they wanted to interview.
As a result of these interviews, OK! Magazine selected 18 highly impressive candidates to extend a job offer to. All were still employed by OK! Magazine 12 months later – a great result for them, their employer, and Inspiring Interns.