How do you bring in a record number of applicants for your organization?

Here at Jacht (pronounced “yacht”), we have a massive turnover rate. The way we function, it’s completely unavoidable. The structure of our business means we can only retain our best talent for 6 to 12 months. I’ve been around for a year now, but even I’ll be out the door this December. No matter how good our work is, or how well we operate as a business, being staffed by students has its limitations.

Obviously we’re posed with a big, and largely unique, problem. We have amazing talent come in the door, and before long, they have to move on. So how do we keep bringing in highly talented individuals from a relatively small pool of potential applicants?

Sometimes it seems like recruitment campaigns can swing one of two ways, and the movie Dodgeball is a good summation of this. You have the Globo Gyms of the world, where there’s a sense of, “We’re better than you, and we know it.” These organizations are successful and prominent, but can be unapproachable and pretentious. Conversely, you can have the Average Joe’s attitude of, “You’re great the way you are, but if you want to improve yourself a bit, come on in.” Fun, friendly, but maybe not as steady and ambitious as you’d like.

Every successful organization works hard to dance on the balance beam between these two extremes. More than that, most great companies usually have a culture that balances the two. Consider Google, or Zappos, or (our neighbors!) Hudl. There’s a zillion articles touting how wonderful it is to work at these places, and that’s basically free PR for those companies’ recruiters. They’re the fortunate few.

No one (except me right now) is writing articles about life at Jacht. So what do those all-star companies do that might be applicable at an organization like Jacht?

From my perspective, it’s pretty simple. They recruit by exposing their internal culture and identity. They don’t put on a facade just to get people in the door, then hit them with the truth once they’re hired. They’re honest. Places like Glassdoor will expose you pretty quickly if you’re B.S.ing your applicants.

You just have to tell people who you are. And show them your work. The number of applicants you get will correspond with how great your people and your work are.

Here’s what we came up with:

Perfect, that sums everything up right? Not quite, but it’s halfway there.

It’s a little vague on its own. But we essentially want people who are willing to go above and beyond what is expected of a college student. We take people who are ready to go into the industry skill-wise, but just don’t have their degree yet. You can see it in our success and the success of our alumni.

That’s some Globo Gym Purple Cobra talk right there. Where’s the Average Joe’s?

I’m not sure we’re the funniest people who have ever written copy (I’m just being humble, Jacht copywriters!). But this is where our people shine through. We aren’t serious people, we’re just people who do serious work. It’s not wildly unprofessional or some kind of shock and awe tactic, it’s just a bit of common language and relaxed design that makes us come off as a bit more approachable.

All of this makes for a great communications strategy, and we found a lot of success in terms of metrics and engagement. But, the most important part of a recruitment strategy is face to face conversation. At the end of the day, you’ll never create a campaign that will answer every question for every potential applicant. Tweets, videos, and photos are all great for creating recognition and interest, but they don’t really convey the absolute essence of your organization. Your people do that.

For us, this took the form of an open house. It was great, we had pizza and cookie cakes. We were fortunate that it was feasible to actually have all our potential applicants come to our space and meet us. If you were interested in copywriting, you could ask our copywriters all the questions you could think of. Same goes for every position.

The whole point of doing this is to prove that our culture is what we said it is. Being transparent with who we really are as an organization and as individuals validates everything we said in our recruitment materials. I know it sounds revolutionary and controversial, but honesty really is the best policy.

In the one month in which we ran our recruitment campaign, we increased the number of received applications by around 40%, compared to the previous recruitment campaign 6 months prior. That’s so vital when you think about how often we have to bring in an entirely new staff.

Many people, myself included, will apply multiple times before they’re accepted. I think having people who apply several times shows that they see who we are, and they know it’s somewhere they’ll be happy and successful. It’s easy to get rejected somewhere and never reapply. Rejection sucks. But when we reject someone and they come back 6 months later, then we’ve created a truly great culture.

Understanding your culture and identity isn’t always the easiest thing to do, but it’s absolutely crucial to work on it. We had the benefit of recently rebranding Jacht, so we’d already had conversations trying to pinpoint who we were. It’s worth taking the time.

Once you know your culture, recruiting is a breeze.