A great example of recruiting with Social Media

Posted by Jim Stroud

March 5, 2008

Someone sent me a very cool blog post on the 37 Signals Corporate Blog that just screamed - WE ARE PASSIVELY RECRUITING YOU! The post described the workplace experiments they are engaged in, among them:

Shorter Work Weeks
Money for hobbies
A discretionary fund for every employee

Yowza! Its also important to note that this post is currently ranked among the top posts on the extremely popular social bookmarking site - Del.icio.us. (At least at this writing.) See below

How to recruit with social media

So… How many people read this post as a result of it being so popular on Del.icio.us? How many people said - Wow! Where do I sign up? But other questions to consider:

How many people subscribed to the blog for more updates?
How many passed this link to other folks like me?
How many other bloggers will pick up on this story?
How many other people bookmarked that link to their account for future reference?
How little did it cost to do something like this?
Who is measuring the impact and influence of this blog post?
Who is kissing up to the folks who are raving about this post?
Who is monitoring the blogosphere to pounce on the detractors?
And finally, how willing is your company to experiment with Social Media?

I love recruiting with Social Media. (Smile) It just rocks!!!!

Here is a snippet of the blog post I am talking about…

At our company-wide get together last December we decided that 2008 was going to be a year of workplace experiments. Among other things, we discussed how we could make 37signals one of the best places in the world to work, learn, and generally be happy.

Here’s are a few of the things we’ve implemented so far:

Last summer we experimented with 4-day work weeks. People should enjoy the weather in the summer. We found that just about the same amount of work gets done in four days vs. five days.

So if that’s the case we could either push everyone to work harder during those five days or we could just skip one of those days. We decided to skip one of those days.

So recently we’ve instituted a four-day work week as standard. We take Fridays off. We’re around for emergencies, and we still do customer service/support on Fridays, but other than that work is not required on Fridays.

Three-day weekends mean people come back extra refreshed on Monday. Three-day weekends mean people come back happier on Monday. Three-day weekends mean people actually work harder and more efficiently during the four-day work week.

Click here to read: Workplace Experiments