If you’ve been avoiding Snapchat, whether personally or professionally, it’s time to start paying attention. It’s a mobile phenomenon which enjoys 100 million users daily, watching 10 billion videos each day. When Snapchat Spectacles were first released, they only seemed to be a playful extension of the app. However, it turns out that these glasses have been used to help recruit talent.

In case you don’t know, Spectacles are sunglasses with an integrated video camera that makes it easy to create what the company calls Memories. They’ll cost $129.99US, and unlike the so-far failed Google Glass, Spectacles look to be fun and feature focused.

So how do Snapchat Spectacles translate into a recruitment tool for businesses?

Wait, you thought Snapchat was a way for kids to sext each other? Okay, it still can be that. However, the importance of employer branding has been trending for years and online videos have driven a lot of it. Companies are already utilizing social media and online video to recruit. And their employees have been comfortable using these tools to create content for years. Until now, combining the two wasn’t really an option.

It’s not too often that you’d see a company hand over the reigns of their Facebook account to a sales person or accountant or PHP developer; even though content from the ground troops would be the most authentic.

However, the employers at Citibank have been wearing Snapchat Spectacles to share how their days look at their office. The result is a literal interpretation of seeing life through someone else’s eyes. These videos are then shared on Facebook and Twitter as recruiting tools.

“What we really loved about this concept is it allowed people to get a bird’s eye view to see new interactions and follow someone around as they do their job,” said Courtney Storz, head of global campus recruitment and program management at Citi.

The firm collected 14 pairs of Snapchat Spectacles over the course of three trips to a New York City pop-up store. Because there are limits on how many pairs one person can buy, it took two members of Citi’s social media team, plus one member’s parents, to collect the 14 pairs. They’ve now been distributed to Citi’s five regions around the world. The first video debuted back in December, with Marilyn McDonald, Citi’s head of digital product management, showcasing a day in her life.

Should you use them?

Employers looking to connect with millennials should look at Snapchat Spectacles as a unique opportunity to put employer branding in the hands of their employees instead of their marketing department. The potential to create a unique employer brand experience is game changing. And while this is a great opportunity to recruit potential talent by showcasing what their lives could be, it can also have the opposite effect. As this becomes your virtual bridge to where candidates actually start to feel what it’s like to work for your company, if the experience isn’t captivating it could turn candidates off of your brand.

To date, very few employers are even talking about recruiting with Snapchat, let alone doing it. That’s no surprise, especially considering the fact that commercial use is in its early days. If marketing and recruiting are synonymous, then Snap needs to be on your radar. And Spectacles are very intriguing medium to build your case to the 100 million users that you are an employer-of-choice. Be cautious, but use social media to your advantage as much as possible.

To read more about how Snapchat Spectacles can be used in recruitment, click here.

Source: http://www.refinery29.com/2017/02/139433/snapchat-spectacles-recruiting-tool
http://www.businessinsider.com/citi-using-snap-spectacles-for-recruiting-2016-12