Digital Federal Credit Union (DCU) is a high-energy, caring and fun culture that also provides top-notch benefits and challenging work.

Candidates weren’t feeling that energy and excitement after visiting their text-heavy careers site. Most importantly, they weren’t getting what made DCU stand out as an employer.

Careers site overhaul

As the Stories Inc. team set out to overhaul DCU’s career site, the first thing they needed was content, and lots of it. In one full day split between two different sites, Stories Inc. interviewed 11 DCU team members, seeking to uncover stories about what it truly means to work at DCU.

The team went in with the plan to capture content for two videos: a culture overview featuring the core values, and one about all the incredible benefits DCU offers, such as superior health care coverage and generous tuition reimbursement.

The unexpected part? Over the course of all the interviews, a third theme organically presented itself: DCU was a pretty fun place to work, and the team members had the stories to prove it.

What we found

In the overview video The DCU Way, DCU employees explained what it means to embody the spirit of working at DCU and their core values: People Come First, Do the Right Thing, and Make a Difference.

For People Come First, VP of Member Services Julie Moran told a story of when one team member’s house flooded. A group of her colleagues banded together to raise enough money to buy a TV for her. They wanted to ease her burden and give her one less purchase to worry about she was getting her home back in order.

Then there’s Collections Manager Megha Singh, who always tries to do the right thing by her members, especially when good people fall on hard times. She always asks herself, when these people eventually make it back, what will they think of DCU and how they were treated?

Team members made it clear they were taken care of, too. When asked about benefits, Information Center Team Leader Mike Pusateri expressed his gratitude for the tuition reimbursement program, which enabled him to continue to go to school even when the financial aid he received didn’t cover it.

As all these stories came out, many had an underlying tone: how fun it was to work at DCU. Human Resources Generalist Bobbi Ewing recalls interviewing a candidate in her first few weeks at the credit union when suddenly candy started to be thrown at her from behind. Turning around, she saw a Harlem Globetrotter standing there, spinning a basketball on his finger, and throwing candy at her. As it turned out, DCU does all kinds of activities and events to boost and maintain morale, and hosting a Harlem Globetrotter was just one of the many fun things Ewing experienced in her first few weeks.

Another fun story, Mortgage Loan Officer Nina Hovsepian always wanted to dress up as Cruella de Vil, and have her kids dress as dalmatians for Halloween. When she shared that her kids were unwilling to participate, a group of her coworkers suggested she dress as Cruella anyway and come to the DCU Halloween Party. She was absolutely shocked to find they had spread the word to the entire department to dress as dalmatians.

What we did with it

DCU wanted a fresh, engaging career site that still fit in with the rest of the company’s corporate brand. So within their existing template, Stories Inc. created a tiled layout — six different areas of DCU life for the candidate to explore: The DCU Way, Benefits, Life@DCU, Growth, Perks and Stories.

When exploring a specific area, the candidate is met with image galleries of real DCU team members as well as interesting social graphics, featuring a team member with a story about a certain aspect of life at DCU that is particularly meaningful for them.

Stories Inc. delivered this content to DCU in both visual mock-ups and in HTML code, making for an easy upload for the tech team to load onto their own server and site. Within 10 weeks of the interview day, the site went live at last!

Storytelling with an impact

Recruitment marketing can have an impact on overall organizational performance. We are just now starting to see studies of its impact on the entire organization.

The story-based career site provides an authentic view into the DCU experience, arming candidates with enough information to decide if they are a fit. Stories Inc. wondered if the quality of the applicant, and thus the quality of hire, improved from pre- to post- career site launch. We asked DCU hiring managers, “Would you consider your new hires this quarter to have ‘raised the talent bar’ on your existing team?”

Forty percent of hiring managers who responded to the survey thought their recent hires raised the bar for their group. If the story-based careers site is improving overall applicant fit and increased quality of hire, DCU can expect increased team and company performance over time.