Employees take over Cisco’s Snapchat account every day, so why not interns?

Cisco Systems has created the gold standard for talent acquisition via social media. The “We Are Cisco” talent brand has been one of the most consistently effective and innovative uses of social media to appeal to prospective employees. Now a new program has won Cisco first place in the “Recruitment Campaign” category of Ragan’s 2018 Employee Communications Awards.

On Snapchat in particular, the company has demonstrated the power of trusting employees—in this case, with the account username and password—to convey what it’s like to work at Cisco and share their enthusiasm for their jobs and the company. It wasn’t too big a stretch, then, to pivot the account with the 2018 Summer of Interns.

Designed to highlight the experience of Cisco interns during their summer tenure, the program began by introducing interns to the WeAreCisco brand and getting them to sign the social media policy (including a vow never to share login credentials). Beyond that, though, the content shared was up to the interns who were guided by the slogan, “Be you, with us.”

Interns interested in participating signed up on a cloud-based spreadsheet, each agreeing to take over the account for one day. On July 26—National Intern Day—the team facilitated a coordinated handoff with five interns in 15-minute increments, kicking it off with the question, “What song best describes your Cisco internship? GO.” One intern shared a song, then passed it to the next.

“We pulled this off in a seamless fashion because of the frequent communication and trust we cultivated at the onset of the program,” Cisco explains. It worked: Thirty-two interns produced 239 Snaps with nearly 90,000 total views. Snapchatters watched 12,000 total minutes, and “swipe up to apply” Snaps doubled from June to July.

Congratulations to Carmen Collins and Lauren Grimaldo for leading one of the best talent acquisition social media programs in all of business—and continuing to innovate.