Since 2021, Stories Inc. has been helping bring Intel’s tech-focused, inclusive, and unique employer brand to life through employee story content. Intel has taken a campaign-specific approach to content creation, working with Stories Inc. to create employee story campaigns that engages specific talent audiences: Elite Athletes, African American Women in Tech, and Early Career Professionals. This case study will focus on the early career recruitment campaign.

Since 1968, Intel has been changing the world by developing ground-breaking technologies while creating an entrepreneurial culture. As a world-leading innovator, Intel was one of the first companies to recognize the importance of employer branding and recruitment marketing. Today they have a sophisticated global recruitment marketing and employer brand team that work together to attract, convert, and retain tens of thousands of employees every year. 

The Challenge: Hiring Top Early Career Talent Around the Globe

Between their internships and rotational programs, the world-leading innovation company, Intel, has worked hard to create a challenging and rewarding early career experience around the globe. As Intel approached the Fall 2022 campus recruitment season, the recruitment marketing team was looking for ways to engage their existing, passive early career talent pipelines. 

Prior to this project, Intel was only using their talent community to push out job alerts. With more than 110,000 early career professionals subscribed to their talent community, Intel realized this was a missed opportunity to use the talent community to communicate culture and drive engagement with this key early career audience. 

With that goal in mind, Intel set out to create an early career recruitment campaign that would drive engagement and applications with their Gen Z audience. Enter Stories Inc.

The Solution: Using Employee Stories to Create an Early Career Recruitment Campaign

To reach these goals, Stories Inc. would create a multi-email nurture campaign highlighting early career professionals thriving at Intel. Each email would contain videos, emails, and interactive digital content all rooted in employee stories. The content would also be repurposed across Intel’s many talent channels to maximize engagement with early career talent.

Interviewing Early Career Professionals Around the Globe

Stories virtually interviewed 13 early career professionals at Intel, strategically selected to mirror the candidates Intel was looking to attract: global technical talent ready to make an impact. The storytellers were located in eight different countries around the globe. Their roles ranged from engineering to marketing to supply chain.  

Over the course of the storyteller interviews, three themes emerged as distinct aspects of an early career experience at Intel:

1. There are many ways to launch a career at Intel
2. Opportunities to innovate as an early career professional
3. International opportunities

These themes would serve as the topics for each of the three emails in the early career recruitment campaign.

Building an Early Career Content Library

With the three email themes identified, Stories Inc. got to work creating six videos, three blogs, and two interactive experiences that would bring the three culture themes to life. These pieces of content would be shared within the emails as well as across Intel’s talent channels.

Six Videos Featuring Intel’s Outstanding Early Career Professionals 

From the 13 interviews, six one-minute employee spotlight videos were created. These videos, featuring broll and graphics alongside the employee stories, showcased the variety of different employee experiences early career professionals can find at Intel. 

Next Level Performance at Intel | David’s Story

After a successful internship, David returned to Intel and was asked to take on a leadership role on his team. Saying “yes” has helped him reach the next level quicker than he ever imagined.

Kick Start Your Career at Intel | Mohamed’s Story

After his internship, Mohamed couldn’t imagine growing his career anywhere else but at Intel. As a software development engineer in Malaysia, his project work spans countries and he’s growing his career by collaborating with team members across the organization.

Building a Network for Life at Intel | LaToya’s Story

Three days into her Intel career, LaToya joined an employee resource group and started building her personal and professional network. Not only did she meet colleagues and friends, but discovered how she was part of the bigger picture at Intel.

Working on Breakthrough Technologies | Junjie’s Story

Junjie was attracted to Intel’s collaborative and inclusive culture. What he didn’t expect? An opportunity to work on technology at the forefront of the industry from day one. 

This video was filmed and recorded in Junjie’s native Chinese.

From Scholarship to Software Engineer | Anna’s Story

As a scholarship recipient turned Intel intern—turned full-time engineer—Anna has been impressed by the exposure she’s gotten to a variety of projects across disciplines.  

This video was filmed and recorded in Anna’s native Polish.

Empowering Women in Tech | Maggie’s Story

As a Cloud Solutions Engineer in Mexico, Maggie has seen Intel’s commitment to engaging women in tech, and helping them grow their careers.

This video was filmed and recorded in Maggie’s native Spanish.

Three Articles for the We Are Intel Blog

In addition to the videos, each email nurture also included links to blog posts highlighting proof of these cultural themes in action. Stories and quotes from the 13 storytellers were major sources for these articles. 

Blog 1: The Different Paths to Launching a Career at Intel

Blog 2: The Power of Purpose: How Intel Early-in-Career Professionals are Changing Tech
Blog 3: How to Get International Exposure Early in Your Career at Intel

Using Stories to Create Interactive Digital Experiences

With their target audience being tech-savvy, Gen Z professionals, Intel wanted to create interactive experiences in addition to the videos and articles. Using the employee stories we uncovered, Stories created an interactive story map and quiz to further engage Intel’s target audience. 

Interactive Employee Story Map

To further hit home the global aspect of being an early career professional at Intel, we created an interactive employee story map. The map allows you to click through to different areas of the world, where candidates will find a text and video story of an early career professional from that region. See an example from China:

By repurposing these videos and text-based stories, Intel provides just another opportunity for early career candidates to interact with their employee storytellers.

Interactive Quiz: What type of Intel innovator are you?

Intel wanted to show early career candidates that there are many ways to build a successful career at the company. To bring this to life, Stories Inc. used the different early career stories to create an interactive quiz helping candidates see themselves at Intel. The quiz has effectively engaged candidates: three months after its launch, it has been taken 1,300 times with a 95% completion rate.

As they progress through the three-question quiz, candidates are asked questions about how they like to learn, problem solve, and connect with others. Based on their responses, quiz-takers are given the Intel Innovator they are most similar to, along with a video or text-based quote highlighting the career experience of that individual. 

From there, quiz-takers are prompted to visit Intel’s career site, just another opportunity for employee stories to lead to candidates taking the next step. 

Early Career Recruitment Campaign: Content Distribution and Performance

The early careers recruitment campaign ran from August through September 2022, during peak early career recruiting season. The campaign’s success would be measured against industry benchmarks established by their CRM.

After being sent to 118,000 early career professionals in Intel’s talent community, the campaign results were as follows: 

• 50% open rate (Benchmark: 25%)
• 7% click rate, resulting in more than 25,000 clicks (Benchmark: 6%)
• Most successful email campaign in 2022, measured by number of applications driven
• Interactive quiz taken more than 1300 times

Conclusion

Early in career professionals are a large audience who are curious about the opportunities for growth and career advancement. Through the stories of Intel’s early in career team members from all corners of the world, candidates get real insight into how Intel could help them jump start a meaningful career.