Cyberjobs
THE CHALLENGE
GCHQ - Government Communications Headquarters - approached TMP Worldwide with a recruitment challenge: they required people to work in Cheltenham in their cyber security division, responsible for protecting UK assets.
The dilemma? How to recruit suitably skilled individuals who are not necessarily attracted to traditional advertising methods? How do you begin to penetrate their world? A digital world that operates outside of one that most of us are familiar with?
The objectives set to TMP were:
- To raise awareness and engagement with GCHQ amongst the cyber specialist community
- To activate curiosity and competition amongst the audience
- Integrate into social media
- Attract applications
- Show innovation in our approach
THE SOLUTION
After some initial research, it was acknowledged that this campaign couldn't look like a series of adverts on a job board. We needed to get closer to the environments in which our target group operate; we needed to challenge their thinking and inspire them to be 'activated'. The campaign comprised of just two core elements - a challenge in the form of a code to break that was seeded in blog environments frequented by individuals with potential cyber skills, and a 'reveal' of the role of Cyber Security Specialists in GCHQ to those that were successful.
The challenge involved seeding an anonymous code challenge amongst technical communities using blogs and YouTube. Bloggers were encouraged to spread the word via their networks and promote a sense of competition to crack it. To keep interest levels high there were several stages to the code. On cracking the challenge, GCHQ was revealed as the originator of the code and the individual was invited to apply.
