Monster Worldwide, one of the world’s largest employment websites, has one primary focus: Customer engagement.
Monster Worldwide uses social media now to connect people and job opportunities around the globe. Founded in 1999, Monster has continued to evolve its job search capabilities and is now more proactive in engaging customers and job candidates on social. By gathering social intelligence through Hootsuite, Monster Worldwide can turn various job-seeking signals into conversations that will help keep Monster top of mind the next time the job seeker is seeking a new opportunity.
Loyalty360 caught up with Patrick Gillooly, Director of Digital Communication and Social Media, Monster Worldwide, to learn more about the company’s keen customer engagement efforts.
How has Monster Worldwide become more proactive in customer engagement?
Our primary focus is on engagement. We very recently moved from a model that was focused almost exclusively on content broadcasting to one that is now predominantly about creating these one-to-one connections. By gathering social intelligence, we are able to turn various job-seeking signals into conversations that put Monster in front of new audiences and that have lasting value for the next time a job seeker or employer may need us.
Using Brandwatch Analytics, we are also able to monitor for trends, competitive insights and leads that not only drive our brand forward, but our sales and product teams as well. Ultimately, it’s all about using social data to make more agile, strategic decisions—harnessing the power of the world’s largest focus group, I like to say.
Monster is already seeing results. For example, in a comparison of the last three months of 2013 versus 2014, we saw 262% growth in Twitter RTs and more than 300% increase in mentions. And while Monster increased customer engagement, we are now five times more efficient in our social media activity because of Hootsuite and its third-party integrations−making our team of three more like a team of 15. And putting us in a position to get even more resources to keep growing down the road.
What factors prompted Monster Worldwide to use social media to connect people and job opportunities around the globe?
With employers and job seekers having more opportunities to connect on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even Instagram, Snapchat and beyond, companies like Monster have been presented with a major opportunity to expand our marketing, product and media efforts across the social web. With more than two decades of experience connecting people with job opportunities using the web, emphasizing and being first in class on social media was a no-brainer.
Traditionally, people only search for jobs every few years, meaning Monster’s brand needs to remain top of mind over longer periods of time. With new competitors and niche solutions for different industries cropping up all the time, it is necessary that we continue to be visible to both job seekers and our customers. As a result, Monster has really focused on social media in order to build positive brand sentiment and relevance by leveraging our ability to engage 
directly and in a 1-to-1 manner with our audiences.
How does social media impact the customer engagement/customer experience levels?
Monster uses both Brandwatch Analytics and Hootsuite to help build the brand and develop lasting relationships with job seekers and customers (potential or current). Hootsuite acts as a hub for all of our social media and engagement workflow, and allows us to significantly scale our activity while remaining true to a core tenet: Be human. We utilize both Hootsuite and Brandwatch Analytics together to analyze dozens of keyword, @mention, and hashtag search streams to find various job seeker and employer search signals—regardless of whether they are calling out Monster’s brand or not.
As an example, listening to particular job-related markers within Hootsuite might give Monster an opportunity to engage with job seekers or find employers who have great candidate experiences. People may not be talking about Monster per-se, but it gives us a chance to make a positive connection and stay top of mind. Setting up Hootsuite listening streams for regional teams and competitors also allows us to grow and protect the global brand, stay on top of industry trends and monitor for conversation topics that can often be quite different from region to region.