Boosting Recruitment by Promoting Company Culture

Today, recruiting and retaining top talent in the architecture, construction and engineering industries is a major challenge given the highly competitive job market. One company, Las Vegas-based Forté Specialty Contractors (Forté), decided to focus on their company culture to position their company as a great place to work. This fundamental value is what allows Forté, a specialty general contractor, to deliver the highest quality projects to some of the biggest names in entertainment and hospitality.

The Challenge

The firm turned to THO to create a program designed to attract talented employees and secure their loyalty to promote unique aspects of company culture and employee benefits, in addition to the work itself. The program used traditional media channels as well as social media tools to not only raise their overall visibility but to reach current and prospective employees.

The Solution
To support Forté’s recruitment and employee retention efforts, THO created a two-pronged external communications program, involving both media relations and social media campaigns.

The media relations program was aimed at securing profile features highlighting the CEO’s unique leadership style and company structure. The social media program consisted of generating content for dissemination across the company’s social media platforms, leveraging the credibility of earned media placements to directly reach the organization’s target audiences and include a call to action.

This two-pronged approach was designed to meet the following objectives:

• Increase awareness of Forté’s unique company culture and structure
• Communicate to current and potential employees that Forté values its team members
• Demonstrate that Forté works on cutting-edge projects and is a leader in the industry, making it an exciting place to work

Results

As the number of media outlets covering the ACE industries is limited, THO crafted pitches highlighting Forté’s many areas of in-house expertise to source additional opportunities in publications of diverse subject matters.

The campaign resulted in several profile features highlighting the CEO, his unique management style, the company itself and its many groundbreaking projects. Earned media placements appeared in key regional and national outlets, including those focused on business and finance, construction, hospitality, design, theme parks and more, positioning the company as a leading expert and effectively widening its reach into the pool of qualified and talented industry professionals.

The social media program resulted in a 42 percent increase in LinkedIn followers and a 35 percent increase in Facebook followers. Additionally, the program resulted in multiple employment inquiries and increased positive social engagement among existing employees.

Takeaways

When leveraging content for dissemination via social media, ensure that the tone and information offered are appropriate to each individual outlet. When seeking to boost recruitment efforts, determine what differentiates a company and its leadership from competitors and highlight that. Finally, to expand the reach of a company to its target audiences, find ways to appeal to a variety of audiences outside the “usual suspects”.

• Industry

  • Commercial & Residential Real Estate
  • Design & Construction
  • Consumer Lifestyle

• Services

  • Strategic public & media relations
  • Social & digital media
  • Content generation
  • Brand enhancement & awareness
  • Internal Media training