Hunting for Talent on the DevOps Highway

If you happened to be in Tel Aviv, Israel last month, you probably saw the eye-catching JFrog billboards that took over the city. The JFrog logo with a solid bright green background challenged all of us to Imagine There’s No Version.

The JFrog green billboards were everywhere! Decorating trains and buses and lighting up the city landmarks. The message was clear; it was an invitation to imagine a future where software updates flow like water. A future where painful software updates no longer exist. A future that JFrog has defined as its mission to enable.

For the past ten years, JFrog’s Israeli office (AKA what us Frogs call the Swamp) has been in Netanya, a 20-minute drive north of Tel Aviv. We learned over the years that the commute is difficult for many Tel Aviv candidates when considering employment opportunities.

With an increasing need to hire tech superstars, we decided to paint Tel Aviv Green. But don’t worry, we have no intention of leaving our Netanya Swamp. We are excited to extend and introduce the JFrog Tel Aviv Swamp – a new location, where Frogs can code.

We wanted to make this opportunity public in the tech industry in the best way possible. We wanted something different, something BIGGER! We wanted to generate a buzz and get potential Frogs attention. And this is what we came up with 😉

So how did it work for us?

Imagine a JFrog campaign version that created over 2,000 CVs and hundreds of candidates that need to be qualified. That was the direct impact the billboards had and you can’t compromise the quality of talent being submitted or their fit for the green spirit.

We’re still in the process of reviewing all these applications, but this offline campaign resulted in a significant increase of traffic to our career website (+800%). The positive impact on other channels, such as our frogs referral programs, have boosted chatter on our social channels and our general brand awareness during the campaign.

The Impact

These prominent billboards had an amazing effect not only externally but also internally with our esprit de corps and Frog spirit. We managed to get our own employees engaged in the campaign by generating buzz, sharing as many pictures of billboards that they can find. This word-of-mouth alone created a separate internal campaign that had friends and families sharing the excitement the billboards created. In the next 2 quarters we’ll know just how many new frogs have joined.

Want to run a similar campaign?

Do you want to take a similar leap and find the right candidates? Here’s our main takeaways from this incredible month:

• Messaging. We went through a lot of iterations before coming up with “Imagine There’s No Version” which was eventually the winning slogan. We knew right away this was the right choice for our target audience that consisted of technical professionals who are struggling with software updates and dealing with multiple versions. This eventually led candidates to visit our website to get more information.
• Go BIG or don’t go. We focused on the areas we wanted to cover, but it was clear that just a few signs will not make the impact. We decided that Tel Aviv will go green so we allocated the right budget to go big and WIN!
• Call To Action. Putting a CTA is crucial! In our case, since one of the main KPIs was hiring, we wanted to drive people to our career page join.jfrog.com.
• Timing matters. Our campaign went up a day after the elections in Israel, but just before the Israeli holidays. Many candidates and hiring managers weren’t available for interviews and our process took longer than usual.
• Better together. Billboards work, but online social communication is important to complete the puzzle. Doing both is the secret sauce.
  
• Measure, measure, measure. Make sure you know what success looks like in advance, so you can check the progress and fine tune along the way.
• Prepare to be swamped. Plan on having a strong and passionate team to respond, screen and interview such a large amount of applications.
  
• Dare to dream. It may seem crazy at first to get a developer to apply to a position after seeing a sign on the highway, but sometimes crazy works. Thinking outside the box will often lead to the biggest successes, especially in a world that is used to routine.

A complete team win

Last but not least, I couldn’t imagine doing it without our ‘A’ team that supported this campaign all the way from start to finish. From our marketing superstars (who made this dream come true) to the Atreo team (our true partners who brilliantly created, designed and promoted this campaign) to our HR warriors (the ones that are always making the impossible possible with a smile and a green spark in their eyes)!

LEAP and the rest will follow.