Before the rise of the social web, employers and job seekers only had limited ways to connect. Monster was an early innovator in bringing job searches online and quickly grew to the world’s largest employment websites.

In recent years, social media has created even more opportunities for job seekers and employers to connect. Most of those conversations take place across multiple sites and platforms. If a few years ago, people used to go to Monster as their one-stop-shop, today, Monster’s customers and potential customers are spread out across many different social networks.

We connected with Patrick Gillooly, Director of Digital Communication and Social Media to learn how Monster is adapting their business to fit this new competitive environment.

Social media to identify job seekers

Monster needed a solution that helped them set-up listening streams for different teams, monitor for brand tone and ensure best practices are used throughout the regional teams, and benchmark their share of voice against competitors. Here is how Hootsuite helped.

How Hootsuite search streams help identify signals

“Hootsuite allows us to stay organized and see conversations easily,” Gillooly says. “Making personal connections online, which is essential to our business growth today, is that much easier.”

As a first step, they set up hundreds of keyword, @mention, and hashtag search streams to listen for various job- and employer-search signals. For example, listening to #JobInterview or #LoveMyJob might give Monster an opportunity to engage with job seekers or find great employers. The same goes for keyword searches around “job,” “interview,” and other related terms or job titles.

People may not be talking about Monster per-se, but it gives the marketing and customer support team a chance to make a connection—and build positive sentiment and brand awareness in the meantime.

“Recruiters need to connect with passive job seekers,” says Gillooly. “Using Hootsuite lets us look for signals for those who like or don’t like their job or are doing an interview, giving us a chance to say ‘good luck’ or connect in other meaningful ways. We execute this strategy across 20 platforms.”

Setting up listening streams for regional teams and Monster’s competitors allows Gillooly to protect the brand, stay on top of industry trends, and monitor for brand tone and best practices across their regional teams.

Start listening strategically with Brandwatch Analytics

Using Brandwatch Analytics within Hootsuite means that Gillooly and his team can monitor and dig deeper into Monster’s social brand presence across more than 80 million online sources such as blogs, forums, news, and review sites, as well as social networks.

Monster created Boolean search Queries within Brandwatch Analytics, which determine the type of information Brandwatch Analytics will search for. Brandwatch Analytics then inspects every corner of the social web to find the specified data. Once the Queries were created, the Monster team pushed the information to Hootsuite, in order to manage all the social data from one unified dashboard.

This also shows them what kind of content and engagement tends to work best with each network’s audience. This means that Monster’s community managers can engage more effectively and work to increase positive brand awareness through better content.

The business impact

By focusing on deep listening, Monster is now more proactive in engaging customers on social. They’re able to turn various job-seeking signals into conversations that will help keep Monster top of mind the next time the job seeker is looking for a new opportunity. Using Brandwatch Analytics, they’re able to monitor third party validations such as what the market is saying about them, their competitors, and their customers—helping them to make more agile, strategic decisions.

And Monster is already seeing results. For example, in a comparison of the last three months of 2013 versus 2014, Monster saw 262% growth in Twitter RTs and over 300% increase in mentions. “Increased listening has significantly impacted our reach on social and our knowledge of the market and competitors,” Gillooly says. “While both our brand presence and positive sentiment is growing, our competitor’s remains the same.”

And while Monster increases customer engagement, they are now five times more efficient in their social media efforts because of Hootsuite and its third-party integrations.