Do you remember the job opportunity of a lifetime offered by Murphy-Goode Winery? Located in Geyserville, Murphy-Goode Winery is a family-owned winery that produces top-rated Alexander Valley wines. They want to find the best candidate for Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent. Do you see me drooling at the opportunity for a “Really Goode Job” — a six-month assignment using social media to promote Murphy-Goode wines and the Sonoma County Wine Country. Oh yeah…and it pays $10,000 a month plus accommodations!
The recruitment approach has relied mainly on public relations and social networking and is quite similar to an offer back in January by Tourism Queensland. The TQ job advertisement was a social media coup with the online video ad going viral around the world, even crashing the job opp site with 25k hits in 1hr. Word is TQ had to increase server capacity 10 fold in the first week to handle this kind of response.
After looking at watching the video glossy eyed, I even forwarded to a few friends I thought would be perfect fits. Candidates were asked to submit an online video application highlighting why they would be best suited for the job. Their new recruit would spend 6 months make a cool $150k and work for only 12 hours a month, feeding fish, collecting the island’s mail, and preparing a blog, photo diary, and videos about the Great Barrier Reef.
After careful consideration (which meant processing 34,684 applications – can you image!), Tourism Queensland would then shortlist the candidates down to the Top 50 and then decided to go for a Top 15 vs 10 plus the one wild card candidate chosen by the people. TQ hired extra staff for this effort and implemented training to ensure every application was assessed in the same way, using the same measures.
Talk about personal branding. Candidates used TV, radio, press interviews, blogs, forums, websites and organising media stunts to push their way through the top 50. Needless to say, Tourism Queensland ended up with thousands of job seekers running to their site. In the end more than 34,000 hopefuls from 200 countries applied for the dream job and the shortlisting netted 50 high potentials. This was followed up with a wild card candidate selected by the people.
TQ eventually worked their way down to a Top 16 and invited all to the 3-day final selection process that took place in May. There was plenty of diversity in the ranks. The top 16 came from 15 countries, ranged in age from 20 to 38, included 10 men and six women, and prior experience as a student, journalist, TV presenter, photographer, receptionist, radio DJ, teacher, charity event manager and an actress. A four-person selection panel led the final selection process which included tasks, tours, and plenty of observation by the panel and the media. The panel monitored their ability to deal with the media interviews, the fast-paced fully loaded schedule, creativity and organization skills to come up with promotions, and the strength of their blog posts to develop followers. What more could any employer want but an opportunity to see that a candidate can demonstrated they have the skills to perform the job.
After a 6-month recruitment process, it was the 60 second video application and of 34 year-old Briton, Ben Southall, that netted the ‘Best Job in the World’. His prior experience
working as a charity fundraiser and events project manager and tour guide in Africa were solid contributors to his success I am sure. He also manages a music festival and run marathons. In his own words, Ben said that the most important thing to him in life was to have an exciting job that makes him happy, puts smiles on peoples’ faces and achieves challenging goals. It seems his ideas, initiative and abilities have landed him just that!
He started work July 1 and as a continuation to the job campaign, TQ has been following his induction and onboarding. You can join me and thousands of others as we follow TQ’s Island Caretaker at the Island Reef Job Blog as well as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.
The “best job in the world” campaign made an international list for the top 50 public relations stunts in the world and earned TQ $100 million worth of free publicity. The idea was to convert all this interest into bookings and profit and so far that seems to be working out nicely. How’s that for ROI.
So back to A Really Goode Job. Murphy Goode held an event in San Francisco back in April to allow candidates to meet the boss, receive job tips and get a 24-hr head start on the application process. Then once again the job was marketed online and a 6-week windows was opened for all candidates to create a 60 second video and apply online.
They since reviewed the applicants and shortlisted to a Top 50 in June. They are now down to the Top 10 and the new Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent will be announced July 21. There have been at least 700 applicants and this process also seems to really engage the public. Some of the videos have as many as 22K views. You can check out all the applicant videos. I’ll give a special promo for Texas’ candidate, Adam Beaugh.
What do I like about all this? I think it’s an effective and innovative method for recruitment and it has a proven ability to build the brand, both employer and product, at the same time. As a candidate, I’d love to hear your version of the story on your organization or product. I’ve read many a job description and been left thinking WTH is this job really! I think this is an excellent way to communicate the job requirements and expected performance outcomes. Not to mention it gives the candidate the opportunity to present themselves beyond words on a piece of paper. Still one challenge for candidates seems to be not letting their technical or social media savvy overshadow their interest or knowledge about the company, product, or region. That’s a lot to pack into 60 seconds!
Granted there are many challenges with this approach but I expect to see more of this in future.
I’d like to hear what you think? Have you tried these recruitment approaches? Or have some other innovative solutions?
