As San Manuel Band of Mission Indians and the San Manuel Casino continued to grow staff as they constructed a large-scale casino and hotel expansion, I was tasked with developing a new recruitment marketing strategy to meet the upcoming staffing needs. I developed a strategy that focused on positioning San Manuel as an organization with dynamic leaders that top applicants would want to work for helped drive LinkedIn followers, which in turn widened our applicant pool. As we plan on filling over 2,000 roles by EOY 2021, a wide applicant pool is necessary to elicit top talent from across the country.

One month into the planning of the campaign, casino operations were suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While planning paid social media and public relations campaigns, I developed a thought leadership program for LinkedIn to help drive interest in San Manuel that could be tapped into once operations resumed. This campaign tapped into the diversity of San Manuel leadership, highlighting staff from diverse backgrounds to highlight the organizational culture. 

The posts offered wisdom from the leadership, coupled with a branded template offering a short quote pulled from the post. 

Through the research, planning, and implementation of a thought leadership program, I helped drive our average monthly LinkedIn follower growth. Over the course of the thought leadership program, the San Manuel Casino account rate of follower growth increased by over 278% in 2020 over the previous year, while the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians' account increased at 381% monthly average followers over 2019.

Research included discovering what roles were a focus, and selecting leaders that would either appeal to those demographics, or have a broad network that could be leveraged to bring in applicants that had not otherwise heard of San Manuel.

Planning included working with each leader to help develop a LinkedIn post meant to generate conversations and awareness of San Manuel's strong people-leaders.

Just seven months into my position, I had raised the San Manuel Tribal and Casino LinkedIn follower count by 106% and 46% respectively, together reaching over 25,000 followers. 

As we made plans for reopening, we worked with multiple agencies to align digital and out-of-home ad buys and public relations story pitches designed to pique interest in working at San Manuel. We identified several areas of concern, but also multiple areas of opportunities that allowed us to offer a stronger employer value than our peers.

We earned significant earned media coverage, including broadcast, local newspapers, and more regarding our hiring push, including articles regarding several women in executive leadership positions within San Manuel.

As our strategies aligned, we also began work on customized landing pages for our high-priority positions. This allowed us to speak directly to the candidates, making them feel wanted and welcomed at San Manuel.

Upon my leaving San Manuel in early 2021, we had job offers to over 1,400 of the 2,000 positions needed to fully operate the casino expansion and meet the Tribal government needs.