David SmookeBill Boorman sees the games in life and understands that a game is often the entry point to a life changing decision. And every recruiter needs an entry point to discuss these life changing decisions with top talent. Bill Boorman’ social recruiting techniques have a way of seeming absurd at first before you realize how practical they are. In this video, shot at the SmartRecruiters HQ, Bill Boorman explains how he recruited talent from universities while using – of all things – Farmville.
“We looked at the audience behavior and said what do they do?” Asked Boorman. “Predominately they spent their time on Facebook. What did they do predominately on Facebook? They predominately spent their time playing games. We then created a Farmville community.”
Bill looked at their goals. Amongst other things they were trying to grow fields of corn. To grow a full field of corn, users had to either plow for two weeks or pay $5 (additional reading on the power of dangling a carrot). So Bill started giving away FarmVille fields of corn to all applicants.
“It had a massive social value to them, far more than if we would have said, ‘here’s a $5 Amazon card or whatever. ‘ That was understanding the audience. Then what we did was hire three interns to play games with them all day. Because if they know you and they play with you, they will trust you and you can approach them and say, ‘come and have a look at us.'”
Bill Boorman, social recruiting expert, is the hat wearing founder of #Tru.
SmartRecruiters is the hiring platform with everything you need to source talent, manage candidates, and make the right hires. Filmed by Arvind Thinagarajan. Edited by Dominique Saavedra. Join the Smartup Group to see it live.
Lee Ann Prescott
