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Amongst all of the strategies for using social networking for recruitment, there’s one that sometimes gets overlooked: have fun.

New Zealand’s police force has taken to Twitter and Facebook with a recruitment strategy that’s proving effective: in addition to advertising positions available, they’ve established an “A Day In The Life” approach, encouraging their officers and recruits to post about the odd daily situations they find themselves in.

It’s a creative approach that follows a couple of social networking’s most effective rules for success: the updates are amusing, original content that are fun for a wide audience to read – this gives people a reason to follow the accounts, where basic self-promotion doesn’t. And importantly, the accounts are updated regularly, overcoming the usual pattern of an enthusiastic start for the first couple of weeks, followed by prolonged silence.

The Twitter account @BetterWorkStories and Facebook account NZPoliceRecruitment consist of updates by a range of NZ Police officers, dog handlers, search & rescue, detectives & neighbourhood police. Meanwhile, @NZPolicecollege is a Twitter account that follows a new recruit at the Royal NZ Police College as she undertakes her training.

The approach is yielding good results, with over 15,000 followers and Likes between the accounts, and @BetterWorkStories was recently publicly voted as one of the nation’s favourite 50 Twitter feeds. Building familiarity via social networking can be a long term approach to increasing recruitment, but the force is definitely endearing itself to potential candidates…

@BetterWorkStory After an argument a woman told her partner to leave. He went outside & began smashing his own car.

NZPoliceRecruitment: How many dudes ya know roll like this? … Local cop just got a brand new bike to patrol the area. 15 minutes after he went for his first ride he came back to the station with an arrest. Offender was flummoxed and goes “How’d you sneak up on me like that?”

@BetterWorkStory Went 2 an island 2 locate lady with dementia. Found her in a bar. We shared a bowl of salted almonds b4 I took her home

You can read more about the success of the approach here – http://recruitmentmarketing.com.au/2012/05/24/twitters-a-choice-recruiter-bro/