Objectives

Right now, 6 million young adults are not employed or in school. Meanwhile, there are 4 million job openings out there, with ⅔ of employers saying they have trouble finding new hires.

Why is this happening? The hiring process is broken. Hiring managers only spend an average of seven seconds looking at a resume. That's a huge barrier to overcome, especially for candidates without a college degree or traditional experience. So we set out to change the behavior of hiring managers, who are set in their ways. And to give young, talented adults the attention they deserve.

Our objective was to increase consideration and employment of this ignored class, this untapped talent; to open hiring managers' eyes to the unique value these candidates bring to the workplace. If we could create something that would last beyond paid media; a program and not just a campaign, thousands of candidates across the country would have their lives transformed in the future.

From the outset of the campaign, we were cognizant of the user behavior of these extremely busy and time-starved hiring managers. So creating content that would speak directly to them in the most efficient way possible was key.

We couldn't just produce another PSA that brought awareness to an issue. We had to solve a business problem. We needed to create a tool for hiring managers and young adults to get connected like never before.

Strategy and Execution

Instead of placing ads, we chose to hack our audience's behavior, and disrupt their primary online channel at the same time. Since hiring managers spend 7 seconds skimming every resume in a pile, we made our candidates break through. How? Custom video resumes, one per candidate, each lasting exactly 7 seconds. And we gave them all a platform to support them, called "7-Second Resumes."

7-second resumes brought this unique talent pool to life beyond their resumes by allowing the candidates to tell the inspiring personal stories that make them valuable employees.

These videos were shared across media channels:

1. We hacked the hiring process by breaking through in hiring managers' LinkedIn news feeds where video is underutilized.
   
2. To capture even more video stories, we set up a mini film studio at job fairs where we recorded, edited and posted videos to each candidate's LinkedIn profile in real time for employers to find on the spot.
   
3. To share these stories with a mass audience, 7-Second Resumes ran on broadcast as well.
   

Ultimately, we turned a broken 7-second hiring process into a vibrant campaign that got these candidates the attention they deserve.

Results

Results to date include:

• Combined with the full campaign, site visits to GradsofLife.org increased by 74%.
• Companies contacting Grads of Life about these candidates increased by 2,150%. This includes an average of 45 businesses a month, up from the pre-campaign average of 2.
• The campaign was featured in Forbes and Fast Company.
• A global company integrated the 7-Second Resume into their recruiting/screening process. They have received 1,200 submissions in just 1 month of testing this, and are already starting to see how it is changing the way they assess candidates.
• Each 7-Second Resume was viewed an average of 344 times.
• The 7-Second Resume even caught the eye of LinkedIn CEO, Jeff Weiner, who created his own video resume.

Media