Employee-generated content drives Cisco’s talent acquisition social media strategy

Cisco Systems uses employee-generated content as the exclusive source of posts across multiple social media channels. The organization’s talent brand team makes tremendous use of employee content year-round (such as the daily Snapchat employee takeover), and a series of contests boosts the level of employee contribution, producing dramatic results. All of this has earned Cisco first place in the “Brand Awareness” category of PR Daily’s 2018 Digital PR & Social Media Awards.

Partnering with employee communications, the talent brand team launched its second annual #WeAreCisco #LoveWhereYouWork contest, which inspired employees to share why they love working at Cisco on their preferred social networks. During an executive “Ask Me Anything” session, one employee asked if Cisco could celebrate Star Wars Day (May the 4th); the executive agreed, assigned an executive sponsor and tasked the talent brand team with managing the organization’s Star Wars Day activities. 

Partnering with NASDAQ, Cisco revived the original contest with the added #Maythe4th hashtag. The organization even added a Jedi Knight job to its open positions; although there was no such job (of course), people could apply, adding their information to Cisco’s talent pipeline. Through the NASDAQ partnership, some entries appeared on the exchange’s Times Square signage. 

The campaign also featured a Facebook Live broadcast with some New York employees at the NASDAQ studios in Star Wars gear, Snapchat stories from Times Square and from Cisco’s NYC office, Instagram Stories and the organization’s first Instagram Live. 

The results were solid: #WeAreCisco trended on May 4, with the campaign producing 3.6 million impressions. Earlier, the first round attracted more than 1,300 employee entries, which served as fodder for more than 25 blog posts. In addition, 25,000 visits to the career site led to 130 applications for the Jedi job, 35 of which were new to the system. 

Congratulations to the team of Macy Andrews, Carmen Collins, Casie Shimansky, Dana Christensen, Helen Gall and Monique Rose.