Our “Hey Joe, know an eskimo?” campaign to encourage our networks to recommend people to join us has been a huge success. Since we launched the campaign less than a year ago we’ve hired half a dozen key staff via the campaign. The idea came to us around a year ago as (like all design agencies at the time), we struggled to find enough talented people to meet the growing needs of our expanding client base. We experimented with recruiters (and still use them on occasion) but find they don’t offer great value for money.

We had pinpointed the talent drought as the single biggest issue facing the company …

…. so we decided to tackle the problem as we would for a client, with strong strategy led creative. We know through experience that it is critical for our hires to be values aligned with the agency. And our networks are naturally full of people who care about the planet and the people around them. So we decided we needed a way to remind them on an ongoing basis to prompt friends and colleagues who were considering a change of career to give us a look.

And so the Hey Joe campaign was born. Rather than just offer money we decided to offer it to everyone who spread the word along the chain of a new hire. The closest referrer got $1,000 - the person who referred the campaign on to that person gets $500 and so on to a maximum of $2k.

Right now we’re hiring a Senior UI Designer, a Senior Backend Developer and as usual we’re always on the look out for Senior Producers so … sign up for our Hey Joe Alerts and share in the love.