Intuit is an American company that provides financial software and services for individuals and small businesses. Known for ‘Going Beyond Innovation,’ Intuit has been widely recognised for keeping up with, and becoming a leader in, the evolving world of social media in online recruitment and employer branding.
Competing for top talent with the likes of Microsoft, Cisco, Adobe and SalesForce has made the company focus heavily on a clear social recruiting strategy.
The Intuit Strategy
The cornerstone of Intuit’s social media strategy is the realisation that the company’s target audience is increasingly moving to social networks outside of traditional career websites.
While Intuit’s career site still lies at the centre of the company’s social media universe, their strategy relies to a greater extent on other networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, ‘where the candidates live.’ Intuit supplements these networks with efforts like blogging and live chats to create ‘buzz’ and ‘conversation’ around their employer brand.
There are over 100 people on the Intuit Global Recruiting Team who contribute to helping the company create a great candidate experience, and Intuit encourages all employees to become brand ambassadors with their ‘Everyone Recruits’ campaign.
LinkedIn Strategy
LinkedIn was the first social network to become part of Intuit’s recruitment and employer branding strategy. Intuit began by taking control of their company page, actively monitoring conversations and adding useful content.
The careers tab of the Intuit company page details new vacancies, provides an overview of benefits and contains interesting videos. The company now has over 20,300 followers on LinkedIn. Intuit created LinkedIn groups for careers and employees, which now have over 6,340 members.
All Intuit recruiters have individual LinkedIn profiles with information that allows jobseekers to engage with the right recruiter.
Facebook Strategy
The Intuit Careers page on Facebook has over 2,200 ‘likes,’ and for good reason. The user-friendly platform provides a wealth of information and opportunities for candidate engagement.
Intuit’s Facebook page serves as a hub for live video chats and wall discussions about technology and careers, videos, job posts and blogs.
Twitter Strategy
With over 2,380 followers, the @IntuitCareers Twitter account is a channel through which the Intuit posts job openings, interacts with candidates and shares updates about the company and industry.
In addition to the company-wide careers account, individual recruiters at Intuit have their own Twitter accounts. The company’s internal recruiters love to hear from jobseekers on Twitter, and will typically give a faster response to a tweet than an email.
Through an internal Social Media Bootcamp, a six-week programme to mould ‘effective social recruiters,’ Intuit recruiters learn to build social profiles, craft constructive bios and find useful information to post and talk about.
The programme teaches recruiters the importance of sharing valuable content with their networks and not just tweeting about job openings. This is a good social media lesson for most recruiters, it’s about branding and content marketing just as much as sourcing.
YouTube Strategy
Perhaps the most unique aspect of Intuit’s social strategy is their use of YouTube videos, which are a tool for both recruitment and employer branding. The Intuit Careers channel on YouTube has over 55,560 video views, and includes videos about specific jobs, business units and the company’s corporate culture.
Intuit recognises that video can be much more powerful than a standard written job posting. Videos are embedded in Intuit job descriptions and used in emails to follow-up with applicants after interviews.
While YouTube tends to fall to the bottom of an organisation’s social recruitment priority list, Intuit is a prime example of the power of video as part of a successful social media strategy.
One former Disney executive, the target of a recent search for a new director at Intuit, wrote to the company saying, ‘Your website is outstanding, and your video that directly speaks to hiring people who are customer-focused is a best practice’ – a nice endorsement from someone in the know!
Measurement
Intuit understands the importance of measurement as part of their social media strategy. The company utilises both quantitative and qualitative measures to understand what works, and what doesn’t work, in terms of recruitment and employer branding.
Intuit uses quantitative measures to gauge success of their social media sites (e.g., number of followers or subscribers), recruitment results (e.g., number of applicants, interviews, offers and hires), and total investment (e.g., time, monetary cost and other resources). Google Analytics helps Intuit track things like candidates on LinkedIn and referrals to their careers page from various social media outlets.
Qualitative measures are used to assess Intuit’s employer brand through comments, retweets, and perceptions of user experience.
Recognition
Intuit is well aware that social media is only ‘social’ if it is used to have a conversation. Applicants enjoy the fact that Intuit is willing to engage and answer questions, and other groups have taken notice as well. Fortune ranked Intuit as #7 out of the ‘Top 100 Companies to Work For’ for being most social. The Huffington Post named Intuit as the #2 most social company in a list that includes major players like Google and Apple.
‘We constantly engage with our candidates on our social sites. We share information on the culture of Intuit, our innovative technology, and why this is a great place to work. We don’t just post jobs – we engage with our candidates and share information and answer questions.’ – Leslie Mason, Senior Recruiter at Intuit
Looking to the Future
The company continues to explore new social options, constantly looking for fresh ways to improve their online recruitment and branding strategy. To gain more insight about their social ‘customers,’ Intuit talks to applicants to hear what they would like to see as part of the company’s social presence.
Originally used by Intuit as storage space for presentations, SlideShare recently became the company’s 5th social media channel. Their account now has over 72,600 total views of their presentations about career advice, technology and recruiting. Intuit is currently testing new channels such as Google+ and Pinterest, and utilising innovative tools like QR codes to drive traffic to their sites.
Many thanks to Intuit and Leslie Mason for helping us with this case study. And the recruitment team would like to hightlight that Intuit is expanding globally and currently hiring in the UK. For a list of all job openings, visit www.intuitcareers.com, and obviously feel free to reach out to recruiters on your favorite social media sites!
For another great example of social media strategy at work, see How Sodexo Does Recruitment and Employer Branding on Social Media.
Adriana Costello is a writer for Link Humans and a student at the London School of Economics in the MSc Management and HR programme. She also blogs about HR and Social Media for Jumpstart:HR. Adriana has a BA in Psychology and a BSBA in Business Administration from Boston University. Connect with Adriana on Twitter: @AdrianaTereza.
How Intuit Does Social Media Recruitment and Employer Branding [Case Study]