1 What are the advantages and disadvantages of using social media to recruit candidates?

United Parcel Service (UPS) is the world’s largest package delivery company with operations in over 200 counties (UPS, 2012). In 2005, UPS launched a strategy to move entirely to online recruitment. Matt Lavery, Talent Acquisition Manager, and Mike Vangel, Account Director, transformed the UPS approach to recruitment, reallocating the budget from 90 per cent print media to 97 per cent social media by 2010 (Brouat, 2012). The overall objective of the strategy was to move all recruitment online through a creation of a social media strategy linking to a careers page. UPS needed the ability to recruit high volumes of seasonal and part-
time employees at a reduced cost. In addition UPS sought to improve employer brand in order to project a technologically savvy image to attract top applicants.
The campaign entitled, ‘UPS Jobs – Problem Solved’, centred around a new careers website that featured innovative videos showing the benefits of working for UPS. Lavery and Vangel commissioned a film crew go around the US and film UPS employees to capture a realistic feel of working life. In addition, they asked current employees to provide constantly updated blogs about their experiences at UPS. To drive internet traffic to the site, UPS used a mixture of old and new technologies, such as print and online ads as well as text messages.
For example, in outdoor ads, viewers were encouraged to go to the website or text a short code, ‘UPSjobs’ to 95495 to access more information. As Vangel says, ‘The comfort with performing non-
voice functions over the phone is a particular cultural phenomenon among the age group TMP was trying to reach for UPS. The primary demographic we’re reaching for is between 18 and 35, and they have a real comfort with mobile phone technology. That, coupled with the process itself, is what has made this work’ (quoted in Brouat, 2012).