Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly - Fish Where The Fish Are: Surprising Help Wanted Ads

Episode Date: February 4, 2023

This week, we take a look at the most creative “help wanted” ads in the world. We’ll talk about how IKEA recruited new workers without needing to buy an ad. How VW found new mechanics by posting ads in the most unusual place. And the amazing ways the intelligence community recruits spies and code breakers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly. As you may know, we've been producing a lot of bonus episodes while under the influences on hiatus. They're called the Beatleology Interviews, where I talk to people who knew the Beatles, work with them, love them, and the authors who write about them. Well, the Beatleology Interviews have become a hit, so we are spinning it out to be a standalone podcast series. You've already heard conversations with people like actors Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and Beatles confidant Astrid Kershaw. But coming up, I talk to May Pang, who dated John Lennon in the mid-70s. I talk to double fantasy guitarist Earl Slick, Apple Records creative director John Kosh. I'll be talking to Jan Hayworth,

who designed the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Very cool. And I'll talk to singer Dion, who is one of only five people still alive who were on the Sgt. Pepper cover. And two of those people were Beatles. The stories they tell are amazing. So thank you for making this series such a success. And please, do me a favor, follow the Beatleology interviews on your podcast app. You don't even have to be a huge Beatles fan, you just have to love storytelling.

Subscribe now, and don't miss a single beat. This is an apostrophe podcast production. Your teeth look whiter than noon, noon, noon You're not you when you're hungry You're a good hand with all teeth You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. Bernard was born on a farm in the East Midlands of England in 1950. His father raised chickens and sold the eggs for income. His mother was a nanny.

The farmhouse had no electricity and no modern plumbing at all. Bernard wasn't a diligent student, left school at the age of 15, and found a job as an apprentice at a local newspaper. While school assignments bored him, he did have a flair for writing. His grandfather was a teacher and his mother was fond of French literature, and they instilled a love of poetry in young Bernard. While at the newspaper, Bernard flirted with becoming a journalist, but soon left that job and drifted with friends, drinking, shooting pool, and, because he loved music, going to dance halls. Then one day in 1967, Bernard spotted an ad in the New Musical Express,

a British music newspaper. The ad had been placed by Liberty Records. They had a job opening for a songwriter. So Bernard stuffed a handful of poems he had written into an envelope and mailed it to the record company. Meanwhile, a 23-year-old named Reg was kicking around London. He had been a bit of a child prodigy, able to pick out melodies on the piano at three years of age. That talent got him a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music at the age of 11. While he had a difficult relationship with his father, both parents were musically inclined and were avid record buyers.

When his mother brought home a record by Elvis, with his father, both parents were musically inclined and were avid record buyers. When his mother brought home a record by Elvis, Reg was hooked on rock and roll. At the age of 17, he formed a blues band. But what he wanted to do most of all was write music for other performers. Then, one day in 1967,

he spotted an ad in the New Musical Express. The ad had been placed by Liberty Records. They had a job opening for a songwriter. So Reg stuffed a bunch of songs he had been composing into an envelope and dropped it off at the record company. Liberty Records saw something in Reg. They wanted him to start writing songs for their stable of artists.

Except it was one problem. Music came easily to Reg, but lyrics did not. So the Liberty Records executive reached into a pile of envelopes from lyric writers, randomly pulled one out, and gave it to Reg. On the tube ride home that night, Reg opened the envelope and began reading the poetry inside. They were written by someone named Bernard, and they were pretty good.

So Reg set some of the poetry to his music and mailed the results to Bernard. They continued writing long distance, in two separate towns, until they finally met six months later. Not long after, Reg and Bernard were hired as staff writers by music publisher Dick James to compose material for various artists. It was a big opportunity, because Dick James was the Beatles' music publisher. Then, on the advice of another record executive, Reg and Bernard began writing songs that Reg himself could sing.

The first tune was titled I've Been Loving You, and an album was recorded in 1968. Despite a few good reviews, the song and LP went nowhere. But the second album was a different story. One composition in particular, titled Your Song, was written by Bernard when he was just 17. It was first recorded by Three Dog Night, but when Reg recorded it for their second LP, it reached the top 10.

That's when Reg changed his name to Elton John, and Bernard, better known as Bernie Toppin, forged their amazing partnership. Elton John and Bernie Toppin have been writing songs together for over 50 years, a remarkable feat in an industry full of contentious breakups. They have sold over 250 million albums, 100 million singles, they have 35 gold records, 25 platinum records, they've been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and they still write songs apart,

living not only in different cities, but often different countries. Bernie used to fax his lyrics to Elton, now he emails them. And it all started because they both answered the same Help Wanted ad back in 1967. Help-wanted ads are a big part of the world of marketing. While many recruitment ads are dry and boring, there are exceptions to the rule. Some companies and organizations are realizing they have to employ highly creative ads in order to attract the best applicants. Finding the right people in the right places is the single most difficult task a company faces.

Sometimes, it's like trying to find gold in a silver mine. You're under the influence. Silvermine. For most of my life, the unemployment rate was a constant reminder that there never seems to be enough jobs available for work-aged adults. But recently, Canada's job vacancies reached an all-time high. There were nearly 1 million unfilled jobs. Unemployment and job vacancies seem to be inching closer to a one-to-one basis, a relationship we've never seen before. There are a lot of reasons for this. Many industries laid employees off during the pandemic and are now trying to rehire. Over 300,000 Canadians are retiring every year,

up 50% from just a decade ago. Birth rates are low. Then there was the Great Resignation. The pandemic prompted people to re-evaluate their lives and many felt unfulfilled by their jobs, so they quit. All of which led to record-setting job openings. Historically, job recruitment ads have been dry and boring. They used to rule the classified sections of newspapers.

Phrases like self-starter, highly motivated, and ability to multitask populated virtually every soul-destroying employment ad ever written. But some companies are not only creating recruitment ads that are smart and surprising, they're posting those ads in the most unusual places. Not long ago, IKEA was building a megastore in Australia. The furniture company needed to find hundreds of employees. Now, they could have placed help-wanted ads in local newspapers and online,

but they chose a more interesting route. If you've ever purchased furniture from IKEA, you'll know they come in boxes with instructions for self-assembly. So IKEA tucked an extra sheet of instructions into every box of furniture. The sheet was titled, Career Instructions.

Subtitle, Assemble Your Future. Essentially, it told people that IKEA was looking for staff and gave instructions on how to apply. It was a very smart idea. First, it was an amusing take on the famous IKEA instructions their customers know so well. Second, they were speaking directly to IKEA customers. In other words, people who already liked the brand.

Third, the sheet could be passed along to friends and family. And here's the best part. Customers delivered the job ads to themselves. Zero media money was spent, zero postage required. The career instructions attracted 4,200 applications for 280 positions. It was smart, inside-the-box thinking. Not long ago, Volkswagen France needed to recruit 1,000 talented mechanics. That's a tall order. The first step was to carefully consider where to post their ads. They wanted to be efficient with their job postings, placing them where the most mechanics would see them. Here's what they did. VW distributed cars that were in need of repairs to garages all over France. Knowing talented mechanics would quickly figure out what was wrong with the cars,

VW discreetly hid recruitment ads on the parts that needed replacement. So when a mechanic removed a damaged exhaust system from one of the cars, there was a sticker on the tailpipe that said, Yes, the exhaust pipe must be changed. Speaking of change, how would you like to come work for us? A message on a malfunctioning battery said, Good analysis. The battery is dead.

If yours is too, don't hesitate to contact us. And a message on a dirty air filter said, Well spotted. You found a dirty air filter. If you need a breath of fresh air, contact us. Each of the ads had a QR code that took mechanics to the VW website where they could apply for a job. It was incredibly successful for VW. They were able to fill all 1,000 positions. The title of the

Hidden Parts campaign was, appropriately, Inside Jobs. Security departments at airports around the world are in constant need of personnel. And finding experienced security people is not easy. So a company called Shield Security in the Netherlands came up with an unorthodox way to advertise job openings. They did it by creating a custom-built briefcase. Inside the briefcase was a recruitment message made out of steel letters. So, when the briefcase passed through the x-ray scanner at various airports, the security staff could clearly see the message.

It said, Wanted. Experienced security personnel. Apply at shieldsecurity.nl. Not only did the briefcase attract applicants, but it got a ton of attention from the security business press, which attracted even more applicants. It was a case of very smart thinking. While some job recruitment ads can be spied inside briefcases, some ads are actually for recruiting spies. Back in World War II, Bletchley Park was the top secret location for codebreakers in England.

Bletchley was a mansion that sat on 58 acres in the English countryside. It had been purchased by Britain's Secret Intelligence Service because, while it was hidden in the country, it was also centrally located near a railway station, and high-volume communication links were available at nearby telephone and telegraph terminals. Highly gifted mathematicians and communications specialists were brought together there to try and break codes used by German forces. At that time, Bletchley was trying to crack the infamous Nazi Enigma code.

The electric Enigma machine was said to be capable of producing 150 million, million, million combinations of letters. But recruiting codebreakers posed a problem. The job positions, and the purpose of Bletchley itself, had to remain top secret. That's when a newspaper crossword puzzle offered a solution. In 1942, the Daily Telegraph newspaper in London published its 5,000th daily crossword puzzle. Surprisingly, that milestone puzzle led to a flood of letters to the editor complaining that the cryptic crosswords had become too easy. Many said they were solving them in just minutes. Those printed letters caught the eye of MI6, the British intelligence service,

who spotted a recruiting opportunity. They contacted the Telegraph editor and suggested the newspaper offer a prize to anyone who could solve the puzzle in under 12 minutes. So the Telegraph issued a challenge to readers to come into its newsroom to try and solve the crossword under test conditions. Those that could solve the puzzle in under 12 minutes would win a prize of 100 pounds. 25 readers took up the challenge. Five of those readers were able to finish the crossword in well under 12 minutes. One did it in seven. A few weeks after the test, those five puzzle solvers

received a confidential letter in the mail inviting them to a meeting at a government location to, quote, discuss a matter of national importance. There, they were asked

to sign an Official Secrets Act. Then, they were recruited to work at Station X, the codename for Bletchley. The remarkable work done there was immortalized in films like Enigma and The Imitation Game. It is said Bletchley's amazing male and female codebreakers shortened the war by two to four years. The FBI did a little headhunting recently,

and it posted the ads in the most unlikely place, right outside the Russian embassy in Washington. The FBI wanted to capitalize on any dissatisfaction or anger within Russian diplomatic or spy services over the invasion of Ukraine. Counterintelligence experts identified the war as a huge opportunity for the U.S. intelligence community to recruit Russian-speaking operatives. But how do you get job ads in front of them? Here's what they did. The FBI created geofenced ads. Geofencing is an advertising strategy where ads are placed in a very specific geographical location

and are fenced off, so to speak, so nobody outside that geographical spot can see or hear them. So, if somebody was standing next to the Russian embassy's stone walls in Washington, they would see FBI recruitment ads on Google and in their Facebook and Twitter feeds. But if you walked past the Russian embassy or crossed the street,

the ads disappeared. The recruitment ads also capitalized on something Putin said. In a recent meeting, Putin publicly embarrassed his intelligence chief by disagreeing with him on a certain policy and chastising the chief to, quote, speak plainly, which left the chief stammering and unsure of what Putin wanted him to say. So the FBI lifted that moment and inserted it into their recruitment ads, reminding Russian intelligence officers that Putin had humiliated their boss, then said, in both English and Russian,

speak plainly, we're ready to listen. When an agent clicked on the ad, they were directed to the webpage of the FBI's counterintelligence office, where they were invited to come in for a confidential talk. The Russian foreign minister was not happy. Last August was the 75th anniversary of Australia's Foreign Intelligence Cyber Security Agency,

the Australian Signals Directorate, or ASD for short. To celebrate that milestone, the ASD contracted the Royal Australian Mint to issue a limited edition commemorative coin. 50,000 coins were minted. The ASD Director General said the coin celebrated the work of the agency's members and the evolution of code-breaking. She went on to say that back in World War II, the Australian military and civilian staff, mostly women,

used pencil and paper to decode Japanese military codes and then re-encode them to send them out to allies. But these new coins were designed to be more than just commemorative. They were also a novel recruitment strategy. The coins actually contained four layers of encrypted code. The ASD said each layer of encryption was progressively harder to solve. Top Australian encryption experts had worked closely with the Mint to design the complex coins. If you were extremely meticulous, it was theoretically possible to get through the first three levels with just a pencil and paper. But you would need a computer to solve the final code.

The Director General said that anyone who could decipher the complex coin encryption would be invited to interview for a career at the Australian Intelligence Agency. The coins were released to the public at 8.45 a.m. on Thursday, September 1st, 2022. That morning, as the coins were being released, the intelligence agency issued a press release saying the complex encryption on the coins had been carefully created by the top ASD staff, who used their extraordinary skills to operate in the slim area between the difficult and the impossible. Then, just over one hour after the release of the coins, the codes were all cracked by a 14-year-old boy. The ASD was gobsmacked. The Director General said it was just unbelievable.

In a press release, the ASD said they were looking forward to meeting the boy and recruiting him. After the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015, the British Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, announced it was recruiting 1,900 skilled high-tech personnel. It wanted to create a dedicated department to combat cybercrime. To do that, it chose a novel recruiting method.

There is an area in East London called Shoreditch, which is a hub for tech startups. Amazon, Google, and Facebook also have offices there. The GCHQ identified the area as a target-rich environment. The medium it chose to advertise the job openings was graffiti. But it specifically chose reverse graffiti, whereby a stencil is put on the sidewalk and a power washer only cleans the areas where the letters are. So when the stencil is removed, the letters show up as clean graffiti etched out of the sidewalk's own grime. The messages last for a small amount of time and are designed to eventually disappear. No paint or spray cans required. The graffiti said there were job openings at the GCHQ, then listed a website address.

The ads attracted a lot of curious job seekers. Except there was one problem. Many applicants had trouble accessing the website. They were greeted by a forbidden notice. At first, people thought it was another code-breaking test to weed out applicants. But as it turned out, it wasn't. The website URL simply didn't work on all browsers. It was a technical snafu. Clearly, the GCHQ really did need new technical recruits in a hurry. Every business struggles to populate its company with the smartest people per square foot. Where do you find the best people? How do you attract their attention?

An every job ad contains a revealing subtext. What the ad says, how it says it, and where the ad is placed says so much about that company's culture. That's why Ikea's career instructions ad in the box was so smart. It wasn't only inexpensive

and perfectly in keeping with Ikea, it also created an entirely new media channel. Volkswagen's idea of hiding recruitment ads on faulty car parts was equally efficient. It got its ads directly under the noses of potential applicants. So did the FBI.

By using digital geofencing, the Bureau leveraged Putin's own words to persuade disillusioned Russian operatives to walk out on Russia as they walked out of the Russian embassy doors. Sometimes recruitment ads are not just ads, they're tests to identify the best applicants, as the Bletchley crossword and ASD coins did. And sometimes job ads inadvertently reveal the urgency of the unfilled positions as the malfunctioning GCHQ graffiti ads did. While all of these creative job ads were unique

and unusual, they all had two important elements in common. They were all placed in surprising locations, and they all followed the golden rule of recruiting. Fish where the fish are, when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Terrestrial Mobile Recording Studio. Producer, Debbie O'Reilly. Sound Engineer, Jeff Devine. Research, Patrick James Aslan. Under the Influence theme by Ari Posner and Ian Lefevre. Music in this episode provided by APM Music.

Follow me on social at Terry O'Influence. This is Season 12 of Under the Influence. If you're enjoying this episode, you might also like Timing is Everything, Season 2, Episode 3. You'll find it in our archives wherever you listen to the show. And you can now find our podcasts on the Apostrophe YouTube channel. Or you can listen ad-free, I won't judge, on Amazon Music. See you next week. Fun fact. The ASD coin contained four kinds of encrypted codes. One that was developed

during the Roman Empire, one that was used during the Second World War, and two different 21st century binary codes. That kid was no dummy.