Bake a cake and get a job at Bromford: Housing association wins gold award for unorthodox recruitment campaign

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to describe an award‐winning recruitment campaign at Bromford, a UK‐based social business providing housing and support services, which incorporated social media, video and digital communications to search for people who not only had the right skills but who could also fit into the organization's untypical culture, with its focus not on policies and procedures but on innovation, fun and encouraging employees to make a difference every day.

Design/methodology/approach

It explains the origins of the campaign, the form it took and the results it has achieved.

Findings

The paper details how a relatively small organization was able to scour the UK for talent to fill five public‐relations and web‐related posts, using social media, video and digital communications. It reveals that, forbidden from using a conventional form, job applicants sent blogs, videos, websites, animations, cakes and even a song to sum up their personalities and skills.

Practical implications

The paper reveals that, over the recruitment period, the campaign reached 13,398 Twitter accounts and was seen 58,656 times. The web page received 1,959 individual visitors and 2,536 overall visits. Of these, 1,089 went directly to the page, suggesting that this is what they were specifically looking for. Finally, on average, about 140 visits a day came directly from Twitter.

Social implications

This paper reveals that an earlier, more traditional campaign, using press advertising, produced only mediocre results.

Originality/value

The paper demonstrates that the days of the traditional job‐application form may be numbered.

Citation

(2013), "Bake a cake and get a job at Bromford: Housing association wins gold award for unorthodox recruitment campaign", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 21 No. 5, pp. 10-11. https://doi.org/10.1108/HRMID-05-2013-0036