6 tech recruitment campaigns ranked for creativity
Any company worth its salt wants to hire amazing software developers. Competition has never been fiercer to get the right people. At the same time, you can’t just hire any old person. We see it all the time with our customers before they come to Devskiller and properly test the skills of their developer candiates. The wrong person can absolutely sink your product though bad team dynamics, buggy software, and customer ill will. So what is a company to do?
In such a competitive market, the best in the brightest have gotten together to find new creative ways of attracting the right kinds of developers. We found six of them that are particularly noteworthy and have ranked them according to their craziness.
6. Uncle Grey covers a computer game with recruitment posters
Developers love gaming, right? Definitely! Uncle Grey, a Danish advertising agency decided to put their advertising where gamers will be able to see them, namely in a video game. They recruited a team of top players in Team Fortress 2 to represent the company in the game. They were then sent out to poster the virtual world. If you played the game, you would see Uncle Grey recruitment posters as you fight your way through levels. And the result? 50 applications in a week!
Verdict: It’s like a concert promoter was tasked with finding developers.
Creativity level: Garage band
5. Luxoft create custom interview merch
With another recruitment marketing team who clearly spends their free time promoting concerts, Luxoft decided to get hyper-specific. They created individualized t-shirts for every single candidate who applied. What’s cooler than having your own personalized merch from your interview?
Verdict: Developers do famously love t-shirts, especially to wear to work.
Creativity level: Ed Hardy
4. Atlassian steals your Geeks
Australia is an incredibly beautiful country with the UN saying it has one of the highest qualities of life anywhere on the planet (second only to Norway). The problem is it is just so far away from most of the rest of the English speaking world. So to go get qualified developers and bring them down under, Atlassian went off to Europe with a plan to Steal your Geeks and bring 15 developers to Australia for 15 days.
Verdict: I’ve had great interviews but have any of them involved cuddling a koala?
Creativity level: Crocodile Dundee
3. SeatGeek makes you code their website
Most of these recruitment campaigns so far involve giving something back to the developer. SeatGeek instead decided to challenge their candidates. As a part of their developer recruitment process, developers to submit their CV. But to find out where they had to go into SeatGeek’s website’s code.
Verdict: It certainly cuts out all the time wasters
Creativity level: The Matrix
2. Amazon swipes right on developers
Love them or hate them, dating apps like Tinder have exploded in recent years. There’s just something really satisfying about being able to give a simple yes or no decision. And if you think about it, a job as a developer isn’t that different than dating. You want to figure out if it will be worth your time to Commit to the other party. Amazon created Tinder ads that developers could swipe write on to learn more. Guess what, the idea was so good that some Amazon employees went off and build a dating app just for geeks.
Verdict: How much would you like to swipe right (or left) on a potential employer?
Creativity level: Ceramics class first date
1. Google puts up up a huge unsolved problem
Think about what kind of developer you want to hire. They should be just as good at problem-solving as they are intelligent. This is a profile sought out by even the biggest players and Google found a way to get serious people to sign up. They put up a simple billboard which was just a math problem. If developers figured out the equation, they were sent to the hiring site. The only people who would apply for the job would be people who aren’t just intelligent but also curious enough to do a math problem on a billboard.
Verdict: Talk about targeting only the perfect developers, Google takes the cake.
Creativity level: Alan Turing
It’s time to create your own creative recruitment campaign
These are all great ideas but they’ve been done before. Now it’s up to you to come up with your own creative recruiting campaign to get the best people for your company. Please share your own favorite recruiting campaigns in the comments below.
Just don’t forget that sourcing candidates is half the battle. To see if they can actually do the work you need them to do, give them a skills test using Devskiller.
