Problem

Gone Interning 🎣

You might be aware of the co-op structure at the University of Waterloo. Typically, co-op students will need to look for a 16-week internship in between study terms. Each term, Waterloop’s roster consists of nearly 80 members. And with ⅔ of the team gone for co-op every four months, this creates obstacles in:

1. Finding and maintaining committed members

2. Nurturing leadership for subsequent terms.

With pressure to qualify for SpaceX’s annual Hyperloop Pod Competition after 2 unsuccessful attempts, we had to communicate that we’re not slowing down. In fact, we’re looking to expand our ranks with new members. For the most part, students join design teams to develop new skills and make friends. As part of Waterloop’s Marketing team, how can we convey a culture of diversity, mentorship, and community, while hiring the best candidates?

Process

Inspiration 💡

The thing is - as Facebook’s VP of Design, Julie Zhuo puts it:

“Hiring is not a problem to be solved …”

Rather, in her book The Making of a Manager, Julie states that its an opportunity to build the future of your organization. And she’s totally right. Hiring or recruiting isn’t about filling holes. In a constant search for long-term members and leaders, we should be planting seeds. This totally changed the way in which we approached the problem. Originally, we were given written samples of past member experiences and were tasked to develop a weekly member spotlight campaign. With a list of pre-recorded responses to a questionnaire, there was little room for creativity. We shouldn’t just be slapping text and photos together - we should be strategically leveraging digital content to share the personal journeys of members behind Waterloop.

Humanizing our Brand 🙋‍♀️

In collaboration with Joanne Wong who created the beautiful graphics behind each photo, I worked to further the content by:

1. Introducing interviews prior to writing

   My first instinct was to go back to the source of those writing samples. Great stories come from the heart - they’re not read from a script. Not only can we better understand their individual experiences, we can also help articulate their thoughts. Just by having a conversation with members of the team, we can more accurately translate their experience into the text format. By doing so, this creates more authentic content that our audience (primarily students) can connect with.

2. Homogenizing voice and tone

   Through content review, I worked to ensure that our voice conveyed our culture of diversity, mentorship, and community, as well as preserving each interviewee’s own unique voice. Alongside the Technical team, I worked to ensure that each post contained technically accurate information, while maintaining high readability for the average reader.

3. Implementing diversity

   It’s important to keep in mind of who our campaign was for: any student that’s willing to learn. Over the past few years, Waterloop has hired from across all faculties and programs. As a primarily engineering-based, design team, our goal was to demystify any hiring assumptions and bring a spotlight onto the multidisciplinary talent that makes us a strong team. Furthermore, as engineering is a traditionally male-dominated field, we wanted to ensure an equal representation of our female members.