TMP Worldwide Advertising & Communications, LLC

Boston Scientific - Hiring Event

Challenge

Boston Scientific has been in the business of innovating medicine for more than 25 years. With a goal of making medicine less invasive, they develop products, technologies and services across a wide range of medical specialties. Manufacturing and R&D engineers are a big part of that process. Based on research, the company wanted to tap into engineers in other industries to try and pull them towards a career with Boston Scientific.

Solution

They decided to hold an exclusive Detroit Invitational Hiring Event, targeted towards engineers in the auto industry. The event offered them an opportunity to think outside their current industry towards another worthwhile career utilizing their rare skills. The original goal of the event was to get face-to-face access to 80-100 qualified candidates; closer to the date of the event, hiring initiatives slowed and fewer candidates were needed. An online advertising campaign was developed to drive traffic to the event site and attendees to the event itself.

Tactics

Using a proprietary TMP tool, we developed a custom Event Site (www.bostonscientifichiringevent.com), with details on the invitational event that allowed candidates to register. Candidate responses linked directly to the recruiting team's email address. All candidates received an auto thank you email; only candidates qualified by the recruiting team were emailed details on the location and time of the event, which took place in July of 2007.

Postings, banners, print ads and radio spots were placed on niche career sites, local print and radio outlets, and major job boards.

Results

TMP's event site included trackers that allowed us to capture post-click data (the number of users who click on a posting, enter and convert through the various media, which helps determine which media is most successful) and post-impression data (the number of users who viewed a posting, did not click, but later returned to the landing site - a more complete picture of the awareness or "branding impact" of the campaign). The data was based on two pages - the landing page, and the thank you page.

Cost Per Applicant

• Overall, the campaign provided 83 applicants at a cost of $163.63 per applicant, including the cost of the event site. Without the event site costs included, the CPA was $152.51.
• The most cost-effective site with the lowest CPA was Monster.com, at $15.29 per applicant. They were not the site that brought in the most applicants, but the media cost was much lower than CareerBuilder, giving them a lower CPA.
• ACM.org and Michigan SPE did not provide any applicants for the event. These media properties had low click numbers and may not get enough exposure to be included in future campaigns.
• The cost effectiveness of sites that provided applicants at a cost of over $1,000.00 per applicant was questionable. If those sites provided applicants that were highly skilled and hired from the event, it may be wise to use them again. If not, they should not be included in the next campaign due to their very high cost. Feedback from Boston Scientific about the quality of candidates that listed their source is needed in order to fully assess the effectiveness of the media.

Additional Event Results

• 30-35 of the candidates who dropped off their resume were viable candidates who BSC would have invited if they held a 2-day event and had more positions available.
• 16 candidates were scheduled to attend, and 13 attended.
• 4 candidates were top-level quality, and all 4 were flown to Minneapolis for final interviews.
• 2 candidates were offered jobs, and the other 2 are still under consideration if hiring picks up again – BSC would have hired all 4 if a slow-down had not taken effect. Average cost per hire worked out to $23,000 each.
• There have been 584 landings on the TMP-Boston Scientific Event Site from the campaign. There have been 83 total Thank You's generated from the campaign – candidates who opted in to attend the event. This is 83% of the original goal of providing 100 candidate attendees.

Overall, the event and campaign were a success and a great learning tool for future placements. By using TMP's Event Site offering and its built-in ROI, we were able to get incredibly detailed information to use in future campaigns. Most importantly, all open positions were filled by highly qualified candidates, and a pipeline of additional candidates resulted as well.