10 RECRUITMENT STORIES

THAT BROKE THE CLUTTER

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
10 WACKY RECRUITMENT STORIES

PEEK-A-BOO, OR, GUERRILLA RECRUITING

Jung Von Matt - Trojan

Uncle Grey - Fortress

HIDDEN MESSAGING
Red 5 Studios Personalized iPod

Ikea Australia secret job description

GAMIFICATION
My Marriot
CXO Challenge

8-9
10 -11

COMPETITIONS
Quixey 60 Second Challenge

12

OgilvyOne Worlds greatest Sales Person

13 - 14

Google Cryptic Billboard

14 - 15

GOOD OLD PRINT-ADS OR, CLICH WITH A SPIN

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WHAT IT COMES DOWN TO..

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WHAT IS METTL?

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WHY THIS E-BOOK?

Okay, we know you are on LinkedIn, and if you are an
HR/Staffing professional, youve also have been trying to
recruit candidates through LinkedIn. How do we know that?
Because 97% of all HR and Staffing professionals use
LinkedIn in their recruiting efforts.
Thats great, because it is a veritable pool of recruiters and
candidates. For numbers sake, thats 225 million users
across 200 countries. Awesome! That should be a cakewalk
then? Fishing for sh where fish are.

particularly not receptive to the noise. To cut through that

clutter and deliver a communication that sticks, is the
problem we should be grappling with. Suffice it to say that
being on LinkedIn, or any other social platform for that
matter, is not the ticket to great recruiting. Great recruitment
results have always been the result of strong, disruptive
recruitment campaigns. The kind, we thought deserves an
eBook all for itself.

SO, HERE WE GO 10 OF THE WACKIEST

RECRUITMENT SUCCESS
STORIES.
.

Not quite. LinkedIn is too crowded, hook, line and sinker.

77% of all global job offers are on LinkedIn. That means
your competition and you are on LinkedIn, trying to find the
best fits from among the 225 million users there are.
Sounds a bit like ..the world, doesnt it?
The place with too many people, too many recruiters and
too many active and passive job seekers to find the gems
from. See the problem? The problem is not the platform, or
where you are. The answer to good recruiting lies in how.
We are bombarded with information, most of which is just
noise. And great candidates already have a job; they are
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PEEK-A-BOO, OR,
GUERRILLA RECRUITING
JUNG VON MATT - TROJAN
Jung Von Matt, a German advertising agency, was looking
for a new art director. How could the German firm reach just
the right audience, grab attention, even earn respect doing
so and get potential candidates to apply to the position?

the dummy text at ipsum.com with the Art Directors job

description. When an artist pasted the dummy text into their
layout, the job description would appear, with a link that
redirected the artist to a page where they could fill up an
application for the position of Art Director, at Jung Von
Matt.
Sounds vaguely familiar to the
Trojan horse? Thats hardly
surprising. Jung Von Matts logo
is a proud Trojan horse in grey
scale.

220,000
People Pasted The Spiked
Text Into Their Layouts

Jung Von Matt decided to invade just the space that their
prospects hang out at the design layout. Each day, 50,000
creative people around the world generate the dummy text
lorem ipsum from ipsum.com to paste on their layouts.
The recruitment think-tank over at Jung Von Matt spiked

14,000
People Clicked On The
Link That Led To The Jung
Von Mat Careers Page

THE RESULT?
Combined with some
meaty social media
buzz, the campaign
became a successful
branding exercise as
well.

UNCLE GREY - FORTRESS

Uncle Grey, the Danish agency, needed to nd great
Front-End Developers.
After trying several traditional recruitment
advertisement methods, including seeking
talent right off the street, they realized that
they were looking in the wrong places. After
doing some behavioral research, Uncle Grey
realized that their target market spent a lot of
their time playing computer games 8 hours
a week on an average, to be precise.
They zeroed in on the most popular of these
games Team Fortress 2, and got into
negotiations with the best players of it to
become representatives or ambassadors for
Uncle Grey, within the game, in exchange for

sponsorship offers.
Uncle Grey developed a website where
potential applicants could fill up an
application. Then they got the ambassadors
to change their game prole name to the URL
to the website.
The profile name would be followed by their
game names since other players (potential
candidates for Uncle Grey) already knew these
players by their game names.

Uncle Grey then created simple posters advertising the

position and these were put up by the ambassadors within
the game levels, there for every player to see.
Within a week, Uncle Grey had over 50 applications from which they were able to source the ideal candidate
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HIDDEN
MESSAGING
RED 5 STUDIOS PERSONALIZED
IPOD

name and a unique code, each iPod carried a personalized

message from Mark Kern, the CEO, covering the candidates
previous work and inviting them to apply.

In their own words,

In the summer of 2006, Mark Kern, Bill Petras, and
Taewon Yun met with advisor Jeff Loomans to discuss how
to grow the Red 5 family. They all knew that recruiting in
the game industry was crazy: people are constantly
spammed by recruiters, and competition for quality talent
is fierce. Still, the three Red 5ers were determined to hire
the best and brightest minds in the industry, while
communicating just how damned cool it is to work at Red 5
Studios.
So, they thought out of the box, and t personalized iPods
inside FedEx boxes and got them delivered to 100 of their
dream candidates. Custom-engraved with each recipients

Red 5 received responses from 90 of the 100 candidates,

while most direct mail initiatives are not to be considered
successful if theres a 2 percent response rate. The icing on
the cake was the enormous word-of-mouth publicity that
Red 5 obtained, making the campaign viral and creating a
branding effect that would outlast the campaign itself.

What would you consider the best recruitment campaign? One that gets you the right employees and doesnt require
you to shell out a dime?
We thought so too, but Ikea, the Swedish gaint, knew this first.

IKEA AUSTRALIA SECRET JOB DESCRIPTION

Looking to rapidly expand their Australia business, Ikea got its customers people who love Ikea, to deliver job descriptions
to themselves, and then spread the word among their connections, leading to 4285 applications and 280 new hires.
Career Instructions, for assembling your future

Sheets carrying instructions on how to find a job with Ikea

were planted inside every at pack of furniture sold by
Ikea. Unassuming customers took the packages home,
opened it and found this inside.
The campaign spoke directly to people who already loved
the brand, and whod spread the word. Heres how the
brand video summarized the campaign results.

$0 MEDIA SPEND

$0 POSTAGE

4285
APPLICATIONS

280
NEW HIRES
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GAMIFICATION

Gabe Zichermann, a respected authority on gamification and its applications, defines the term as "the
process of using game thinking and mechanics to engage audiences and solve problems." To put it simply,
gamification looks to attach psychological incentives to typical, even mundane, tasks like applying for a job
position. When you see an arena of business where competition could spur better results, what you see is a
potential for gamification.

Gamification has been seeping into almost every other

aspect of business, but has only recently begun to be used
in recruiting. The obvious advantage of gamification is
engagement, by fueling competition and thereby,
increased participation. So when you gamify your
recruitment process, you are not just giving the candidate a
shot at working with you, you are providing him a chance to
come out the winner among the competition, have fun in
the process and then get to work with you - an offer good,
competitive candidates cant refuse.
Why are we so sure?

MY MARRIOT
Hospitality industry is still under wraps for most youth
who are at the cusp of adolescence. Marriot wanted
to demystify the hospitality business, and let the
youth see what goes behind the scenes themselves;
even nudge them onto a career path in hospitality.
My Marriot is a simulation game akin to Farmville
except that its purpose is not to generate revenue
but engage, educate and potentially source good
candidates into the hospitality industry, particularly
from markets such as India and China which have
notoriously poor hospitality-industry traditions.
Susan Strayer, a human-resources branding expert at
Marriott who helped develop the game, credited the
success of the game on the very basic idea behind
gamification of their recruitment process,
Not only am I having fun but I'm actually getting an
understanding of what it takes to run a kitchen.
The first iteration included a rough simulation of Marriot Kitchen.

The player is required to buy raw material for the kitchen based on a selection of ingredients
categorized by quality and price.

Further enhancing the experience, in-game

rounds required the player to assign tickets to
cooks and inspect outgoing orders for quality
before they reached the customers.

Hed also have to hire staff for his Marriot

kitchen, based on a range of experience and
salaries.

The credit, however, for envisioning gamification must probably go to Colonel Casey Wardynski who
envisioned the idea in 1999. In his own words, his idea was using computer game technology to provide the
public a virtual Soldier experience that was engaging, informative and entertaining. The game financed by the
U.S. government and distributed by free download has grown in ways nobody imagined, not even the creators
and is still being used to train and educate U.S army soldiers.

COGNIZANT'S CXO CHALLENGE,ON METTL

Cognizant Technology Solutions is a leading IT
infrastructure and business consulting company. As part of
its campus engagement exercise, one of its ideas was to
come up with a contest that would test the skills of some
B-school graduates on several parameters. The idea was
simple to promote their brand, hand-pick students to

interact with their CXO team through a contest and recruit

the best talent .

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The platform was powered by Mettls

simulator that dished out challenges
across a spectrum of genres puzzles,
case challenges, guesstimates and
spreadsheet analysis.
The challenge was topped off with a
psychometric analysis that provided
insights into the basic motivations of
candidates

Cognizant partnered with Mettl to create a highly interactive online contest for
Cognizant. The context would have top B-school students competing with
each other on simulated real-world business problems to find the best
solutions.
The first round of the contest saw participation from 2300 students from 27 of
the best B-schools from all over India, Dubai, Manila and Singapore.

The leaderboard feature (shown in the

image) helped create the much needed
social
visibility
to
enhance
competitiveness among the candidates.
Cognizant could also do custom branding
on the platform to create a brand
experience that would stay in the
campuses and would help grab the best
talent even in subsequent years.
The eventual 8 winners were mentored by
Cognizants c-suite executives and the top
two candidates were given cash prizes.

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COMPETITIONS
QUIXEY 60 SECOND CHALLENGE

What do they do?

Its not just established stalwarts that have taken to creative

recruitment campaigns. In fact, considering the stakes a
startup has on each of its employees, it makes all the more
sense for it to break the clutter with innovative recruitment
advertising.
One such was created and executed by Quixey, a then
startup, which calls itself the search engine for apps.
Users can search by what they want to get done
in natural language and the app will throw up
results by crawling and collating information
from multiple sources
Naturally, in their search for the best engineers
Quixey had the likes of Facebook and Google
as competition.

At one point, Quixey was shelling out $20k per

developer hire to traditional recruiters.

Quixey challenged engineers to solve a 60-second

programming puzzle offering a $100 reward every day for a
month. Programmers queued up to take the challenge for
the obvious incentive and Quixey was able to find 3 full time
hires and 2 intern hires during the time the contest ran.
Talking to readwrite.com, Lisa Shapira, co-founder and CTO
of Quixey, surmised the effectiveness of the 60 second
challenge. "We just hired a guy named Marshall who doesn't
have a college degree and lives in Grand Rapids Michigan.
He wouldn't come in from a Silicon Valley recruiter, but he
reads Hacker News and he nailed the interview.
Its been said too many times, but
diamonds are indeed found in the rough. You
just need the right plough to unearth them.

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OGILVYONE WORLDS GREATEST SALES PERSON

As a name synonymous with great advertising, it wouldve
been criminal if OgilvyOne didnt have a recruitment
campaign worth a place in this eBook.
Back in 2010, looking to add some muscle to its sales force,
OgilvyOne, launched its recruitment campaign titled, The
Search for the Worlds Greatest Sales Person. Firmly based
on David Ogilvys credo, We sell, or else., OgilvyOne
decided to come up with a competition to find the best
salesman. And whats the best way to judge a sales person?
Get him to sell something thats difficult to sell! Thats
exactly what OgilvyOne did, asking participants to sell a
brick. A YouTube channel was launched, asking participants

to upload a video of them selling a brick. A targeted social

media campaign made sure that news about the
competition reached the right people. The reward? Three
finalists would be own to Cannes Lions Advertising Festival
for a chance to compete for a fellowship with the agency.

Our business is all about selling, and how we sell is changing fast. We thought it was time to reassert the importance
of sales, honor the timeless craft of persuasion, glean wisdom from the best, and highlight the new tools and
platforms which are re-shaping it for customers.

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Explained Mat Zucker, Executive Creative Director of

OgilvyOne, New York and the originator of the competition.
To give a glimpse of great salesmanship and its expectation,
OgilvyOne seeded its YouTube channel with video snippets
of celebrated salespeople using proven sales techniques to
close deals.
Fittingly, the YouTube video that explains the contest ends
with these words close us.

GOOGLE CRYPTIC BILLBOARD

Back in 2004, billboards, like the one shown above, started

appearing on Highway 101, the main artery of Silicon Valley.
The enthusiastic few who solved the puzzle to its solution
and reached www.7427466391.com were then presented
another challenge.
On successfully completing it, the candidates
were greeted with the following message and
eventually rewarded with an interview at
Google headquarters.

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Nice work. Well done. Mazel tov. Youve made it to Google Labs and were glad youre here. One thing we learned while
building Google is that its easier to find what youre looking for if it comes looking for you. What were looking for are
the best engineers in the world. And here you are.

Arguably, Google would have had more respondents to its puzzle if the billboard had carried the famous multi-color logo. But,
the anonymity was not without reason, and a sound one at that: Google wasnt looking for wannabe Googlers. .
The billboard puzzle resulted in Google finding a small group of enthusiastic problem solvers a trait that the
company believes makes its DNA
Thats pretty much it.
Okay, no, wait. We kept the best for the last. Also, as classy as monochrome

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GOOD OLD PRINT ADS...

APPLE - CLOSE YOUR WINDOWS

Theres a reason why print-ads arent history yet.

They work.
The wordplay is hard to miss. Youd think a firm
like Apple wont need to try to catch your attention.
But thats only because they make it seem so
easy almost every time.

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WHAT IT COMES
DOWN TO..
We hope weve provided you a glimpse into the largely

acknowledged that job postings on LinkedIn and a dozen

unexplored possibilities you could make use to create

other job boards arent fail-safe ways to find great

powerful, disruptive and effective recruitment campaigns.

employees.

Any business is its employees. And today, with all the digital

Perhaps, its time we acknowledged that to get the best we

noise around us, its tougher than ever to find the right

need the best disruptive recruitment campaigns attentively

people for business. Perhaps then, its time we

crafted to reach and move great candidates.

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WHAT IS
METTL?
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entire employee lifecycle, beginning with pre-hiring screening and candidate skills assessment, training and development
programs for employees/students, certification exams, contests and more.

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Author
Sharan Suresh | Product Evangelist,
Mettl

www.mettl.com | contact@mettl.com |
Phone: +1 650 450 4620 (U.S.) | +91 124 - 3220914 (India)

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