As we have said before, social media marketing isn’t about pretty pictures or the odd update, it’s so much more. In fact, social campaigns don’t even need to be done via social media channels at all, if you use a little creativity.

Here are some of the most creative ways companies use social to drive up internal recruitment.

Mastercard Canada ran a campaign on social media competition whereby potential candidates had to  submit her idea for a way to help the company innovate their move towards a cashless society, in order to win an opportunity to work for the global payments giant. Candidates were scored in the number of retweets and like they received. The campaign saw great success as over 500 qualified candidates entered, allowing the company to expand the program and hire more interns due to the sheer number of quality candidate applications they received.

This simple campaign is a great example of how a company understands its audience and leverages the entrepreneurial quality it looks for in its employees.

Although an pretty old campaign now at 10 years old, but even in today’s time this campaign and the use of YouTube would still work today. OgilvyOne’s campaign to find the greatest salesperson, asked potential candidates to send a video to them showing the person selling them a brick. In return they would be given a 3-month paid fellowship and a chance to pitch at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival.

OgilvyOne’s campaign showed just how much it knew its target audience, the simple jokes, the stereotypical salesperson presenting the video, even the competition both the simplicity of selling something like a brick through to knowing that their target audiences salespeople, can’t shy away from a challenge or chance to inflate their ego’s – All these small things make for a great campaign.

IKEA has always been great at social, and their brilliant campaign targeted at filling 100 positions at a newly opened store were nothing short of genius. They generated over 4,000 quality applications that ended up in 280 staff being hired, and all they did was put a clever twist on job descriptions to make them look like assembly instructions you would find in any of their flat pack products, inside their products that customers bought. Simple, low cost and directly targeted at the people they want to hire, people who know and understand their products, their customers.

A great example of how to use what resources you have, to make a great social campaign that delivers on results, and not a social media platform in sight.