Shangri-La's experience with the new LinkedIn Career Pages.

"LinkedIn is a great platform that enables us to really communicate our brand clearly and directly to potential candidates."

Arthur Wan

Human Resources Officer,
Shangri-La International

As the luxury chain evolved into a truly worldwide business, the HR challenge became establishing a consistent and unified employer brand across all markets, and developing a global talent pipeline. The business recognised the need to strategically develop its talent brand to compete in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Shangri-La saw an opportunity to reach more relevant candidates for its dynamic hiring needs through social recruiting. Core to this success was an authentic employer brand that differentiated it from the competition. The next decision was to draw on employees to tell the company’s story.

Arthur Wan, Human Resources Officer at Shangri-La, says, “It’s not just putting a corporate image on the Career Page and describing who we are – we want our colleagues to tell their stories and be the face of our brand.” As the HR team started to transform their approach, Shangri-La needed a more cohesive and centralised process that was versatile enough to operate in 24 countries or regions. As a growing enterprise with a prestigious reputation to uphold, Shangri-La needed to be able to respond quickly to changing hiring needs, and to access the right talent at the right time.

The Solution

The new LinkedIn Career Pages give Shangri-La the platform it needs to unify its employer brand and put employees at centre stage. Rich media has exploded the way the hotel chain tells its employer brand story. For example, by sharing a video of its Colleagues’ Month — where hotels celebrate the contribution of colleagues with a series of activities — Shangri-La can give an authentic snapshot of life in the company.

Showcasing employee perspectives allows potential candidates to connect with their future colleagues – and picture themselves as part of the Shangri-La brand.

Wan says, “With LinkedIn, we see that the employer brand is important for us to differentiate ourselves and promote ourselves as an employer of choice, and we're trying to do that through authentic stories from our people."

The Results

Turning to LinkedIn Talent Solutions has enabled Shangri-La to build a strong talent pipeline for critical and high-volume or seasonal roles, with exceptional candidates all over the world. Since migrating to the new LinkedIn Career Pages, Shangri-La has seen a 75% increase in job clicks, and a 47% increase in page views per person. This means visitors are engaging with much more of the company’s content and taking a keen interest in the positions posted.

The company now receives more than 15,000 job applications per month, up from 10,000 in 2013, with around 15–20% coming through LinkedIn. As the dynamic content of the new Career Pages puts the business in front of even more LinkedIn members, Shangri-La only expects this pipeline to grow. Within the organisation, word about the success of the Career Pages is spreading. Wan says, “The delightful part is that more and more of our hotels’ recruiting teams and hiring managers are now embracing the idea of using LinkedIn as a recruitment tool. We get a lot more enquiries from our hotels about how they can fully utilise LinkedIn.”

Shangri-La

How Asia-Pacific’s leading luxury hotel group is reaching global candidates for local opportunities and seeing their pipeline grow tremendously year-over-year.