Full disclosure. I have received packages from United Parcel Service (UPS) before, but have never applied – or been a candidate – for a job at the company. If I was interested though, they sure do make it easy. Especially around the holidays, their peak season obviously.
I didn’t have UPS, or this post, in mind when I turned to my Twitter account yesterday.
But I didn’t get very far when the tweet below caught my eye.
UPSjobs UPS Jobs
100 Retweets
13,000+ people hired in US by @UPSjobs last week & we’ll hire even more next week! Please Share: bit.ly/ofJoSr #urtc #zappos
Here’s the cool part though. I click on the link and up pops a Google map of the U.S. with a headline that says 3,287 Active Jobs for UPS.
And then there are these red flags all over that map that show where the jobs are located.
All you do is click on one of those nearest the location where you live, and then you get lines such as “69 jobs are in Washington,” “79 jobs are in California,” “119 jobs are in Minnesota,” and so on.
Then it says “CLICK HERE” to zoom in on the jobs, and up pop more flags.
Click on those in individual cities, and you get specific jobs such as “Driver Helper,” with the following type of job description.
Job Inquiry DETAILS:
Position: Driver Helper
Job Group: Helper
Location: WADENA, MN 56482 – WADENA
Day (8:00 AM – 8:00 PM)
JOB DESCRIPTION:
UPS is hiring individuals to work as temporary, seasonal Driver Helpers. This is a physical, fast-paced, outdoor position that involves continual lifting, lowering and carrying packages that typically weigh 25 – 35 lbs. and may weigh up to 70 lbs. It requires excellent customer contact skills and a lot of walking.
As a Driver Helper you will not drive the delivery vehicle but assist the driver in the delivery of packages.
Driver Helpers usually meet the UPS driver at a mutually agreed upon time and location each weekday (Monday through Friday) and typically do not work on weekends or selected holidays. Hours vary but usually begin after 8:00 a.m. and end before 8:00 p.m. Driver Helpers must comply with UPS appearance guidelines.
Driver Helper seasonal opportunities are typically between the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday time period.
CONTACT INFORMATION (Please Sign in to continue)
Then you sign in using your email, and you are on your way to creating your job profile and applying for a job.
I admit I haven’t applied for many jobs online, but I can’t imagine any process being any easier or more streamlined.
Since UPS loves logistics, I guess it stands to reason that they would nail the logistical part of hiring over 50,000 temporary positions.
What exactly though goes into hiring that many people to help deliver 430 million packages between Thanksgiving and Christmas?
According to Matt Lavery, corporate talent acquisition manager at UPS, the planning is “year-round including identifying hiring needs, package volume trends, interview training and refining advertising strategies.”
Like their drivers, the process moves fast on the HR side.
Lavery says it’s not uncommon for someone to interview on Thursday, have orientation on Friday and be on the job by Monday.
It’s not uncommon for someone to interview on Thursday, have orientation on Friday and be on the job by Monday.
So how they do they find those people? That many people? They use a three-tiered approach of advertising on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as job boards and search engine keywords and college visits.
As recently as 2005, the company says it was spending 90% of its recruitment advertising on traditional local media.
By last year however, that shift to social media was almost complete with 97% of the recruiting spend, and only 3% on local media.
And the approach is working.
UPS Holiday By The Numbers
55,892 seasonal employees
30 shopping days and 20 shipping days btwn Thanksgiving & Christmas
120 million pkgs will be delivered the week before Christmas
22 million of those will be on December 22 alone
300 pkgs/second delivered that day
400 extra airplane flights per day peak week
Source: http://blog.ups.com/holiday
According to a company blog, UPS claims over 1 million page views per week on the job site with over 100,000 viewing the job videos, which shows candidates exactly the job they’re applying for.
UPS says the cost of finding a successful applicant through social media is about $60 to $70 a hire, compared with $500 to $600 a hire, using traditional print advertising.
There’s more to social media than just ROI though.
The company says social media helps them target potential applicants and also provides useful demographic information.
So UPS is one great example of a company successfully using social media as a prime recruiting method, particularly appropriate to write about this time of year.
Do you know of others Staffing Talk should take a look at?
Let us know.
And by the way, have a safe and Happy Thanksgiving.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I knew UPS hired extra workers during the holidays, but I had absolutely no idea just how many. This story really brings that process to life! Amazing. Those numbers are just eye popping, from the hiring to the dropping off of the holiday packages at your door. I guess their advertising tagline, “it’s logistics,” fits. Their drivers obviously do some heavy lifting with pkgs up to 70 lbs. But it seems social media is doing a bunch of the heavy lifting when it comes to the hiring as well. Great story.
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Great Article David. In terms of other companies hiring tons of temps, you can look at Macy’s who announced they were hiring about 78,000 this holiday season. I’m guessing the big guys like Walmart and Target are pretty busy hiring temps as well. Home Depot is always hiring temps as well.
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Thanks for the comment Amir. Of course it stands to reason the big retailers are adding headcount, and if I had thought about it, it stands to reason also that so would others along the supply chain. The UPS story stuck out at me both because of the sheer volume, which as you say may even be eclipsed by Macys et al, but also because of the way they are doing the hiring. I just saw that tweet, and a couple of clicks and seconds later, I could have been applying online for a job in my area, that I could possibly start at by Monday. I think that’s amazing! I think it is also amazing how complete the flip was for UPS from traditional recruiting via mainstream media to social media almost exclusively. Thanks for reading. Hope you are having a good holiday yourself.
I too am amazed at how efficient a company can be in their hiring practices on such a large scale. UPS’ switching from traditional media to social at just about 10% of the cost and an equal or greater success rate says something about traditional media.
Looking at the big picture, this all make sense but looking at individual details can be mind blowing. 120 Million packages in one week!
Happy Holidays!
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