LSR7 Life
This campaign was focused around improving the way we hired talent and positioning the district to be fully staffed for years to come. The name LSR7 Life was created to brand all of our marketing materials created to showcase the uniqueness and benefits of working for our district.
Careers + Life Page Development
Reworking our existing “Careers” page was another facet of this campaign. All of our content creation would have been for not if we still ran with our old messaging strategy. Weaving our content into our established, high-performing website not only helped our SEO, but it really gave that cherry-on-top feel to our campaign. Now all of our existing touch points with potential employees were unified.
We didn’t stop there. Our commitment to advancing our hiring practices took another step when our district purchased a premium LinkedIn membership. This membership gave us priority job spaces and a new “Life” tab where we could engage numerous job seekers.
Collateral and Language Building
Consistency is key. Consistent wording, consistent imagery, a consistent call to action – unifying our messaging helped to create a campaign that was subtle enough to be built into our regular social schedule, but could also be a promoted post without setting off the viewer’s alarm bells. We wanted to use professional images that highlighted an educator in their space. That included scheduling portraits, designing a LSR7 Life logo, ad copywriting and rebuilding existing materials like our website and career fair flyers. It also took numerous meetings to make sure our team was in agreement with the vision of the campaign. Oh yeah, and of course the hour long meeting deciding which word to bold.
Internal Relationship Management
Does your company have an ongoing relationship between the PR/Marketing department and the hiring team?
If you don’t, it’s a must. Between creating hiring graphics or ads and trying to create a presence on LinkedIn, getting the sourcing data on our job candidates was important to tell us if we were marketing in the right places. We created a standing monthly meeting to share knowledge between teams, manage our hiring campaign and leverage our tools more effectively. On top of that, getting out of the cube and working alongside another department is good for the mind.
Moving Parts
Reels that tell a story
One of the key aspects of this campaign is showing people an authentic look at being a part of the Lee’s Summit family. I wanted to capitalize on this campaign being so organic that we could work it into our social media calendar without setting off alarm bells in the mind of the viewer. The subtly of the logo in the corner, combined with showing off our great district provided for awesome content with a message.
Incorporated in these Reels are “Day-in-the-Life” and “Unique” events.
I’ll have what she’s having
Testimonials will always be a big part of the hiring space in education. Usually, people that work in schools love kids, no matter the district. When you work in education, it’s the district that makes the difference. Hearing it from a peer is huge!
Our district typically hires teachers with years of experience. That’s significant because it means we’re taking another district’s experienced teacher. Every positive testimonial was a recruiting tool in our box to say “look how different it is over here.”
Short Story Long
This project began as a simple flyer request.
For those reading this, who do not have experience working in education, a flyer request is something that comes across the PR desk on a regular basis. Usually, we are the most equipped to handle these requests as we do the all of the district’s graphic design and copywriting. Additionally, most departments will request a flyer because handing these out has been a staple of schooling for decades, even though there are more efficient means of distributing information.
This flyer was going to be the first piece of marketing material given to potential staff at career fairs and other hiring events. The HR team was using a folder containing a 30 page packet of information ranging from pay scale to detailed Board of Education policy. It was incredibly clunky. Being a 23 year old, young in my career, it was really hard to imagine myself taking time to look through and understand one of these packets at a hiring event. There was so much more inside than was needed to generate interest. Lots of pages that would only be important to someone with years of experience and needing a detailed explanation of how the retirement benefits worked.
Their goal was to trim that 30 page packet into a modern one pager with information about our district’s pay, benefits and community. They’d drawn inspiration from other districts who used a “Top Ten” listing approach to attracting talent. Other than that request, they gave us control on the branding and feel of the flyer.
As I began working on the design for this flyer, I realized that our approach to marketing for HR could use an overhaul. A similar feel should be created whenever someone interacted with anything that had to do with hiring. We had an opportunity to not just take inspiration from our competition, but really take a step forward in how we approached potential staff as a whole. It became my duty to help foster a better relationship with the Human Resources team and to align our marketing with their goals. As a part of that, I got to deliver the LSR7 Life concept to them.
Let’s try a new look.
Evan Sanders 