Case Study – Graham Media Group

Graham Media Group, a subsidiary of Graham Holdings Company (NYSE:GHC), has been a fixture in the broadcasting industry for 70 years. Previously known as Post-Newsweek Stations, Graham Media Group owns seven local television stations, each in a top-70 market. Stations include KPRC–Houston, WDIV–Detroit, and WSLS–Roanoke (NBC); KSAT–San Antonio (ABC); WKMG–Orlando (CBS); WJXT–Jacksonville (fully local); and WCWJ–Jacksonville (CW), in addition to the company’s Social News Desk. Graham Media also operates a host of digital channels, websites, and mobile apps delivering breaking news, weather, and community news to millions of users.

With multiple organizations under its brand, Graham Media consistently hires a variety of talent. This not only includes reporters, multimedia journalists, anchors, producers, and photographers, but also administrative, HR, IT, advertising, and other personnel critical to carrying out the company’s mission: To be involved in local initiatives and public service projects designed to serve, inform, and improve their respective communities.

Challenges

With a growing talent pool and an increasingly competitive job market, Graham Media knew it was time to expand its recruiting toolbox to simplify the hiring process. Although the company was already posting job ads to a handful of general and niche job boards, it wanted to maximize its exposure to hyper-relevant candidates interested in long-term careers. The ideal solution, however, would need to ensure job postings were branded appropriately for the respective hiring station while articulating each station’s relationship to Graham Media. With employer branding playing a critical role in attracting top talent, the organization knew the importance of clearly tying its local stations to the well-established parent company.

“Our biggest hiring challenge is brand recognition,” said Julie Dreixler, Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, Graham Media Group. “Communicating what Graham Media Group is all about and the diverse media opportunities we can provide to applicants is critical to our growth.”

Solutions

Graham Media turned to iHire, a leading employment platform with 57 industry-specific talent communities, including iHireBroadcasting. iHire’s industry-focused communities are proven to deliver applicants who are five-times more qualified than those found through general boards, making iHire an ideal fit for meeting the company’s recruiting goals. Specifically, Graham Media selected iHire’s automated Job Slots solution.

By using an XML feed (or site wrap) generated from Graham Media’s website, Job Slots capture ads from the company’s Careers page and automatically posts them to iHire’s communities. Each station’s job ads are branded accordingly, but also highlight the Graham Media brand – educating local populations about the parent company’s rich history and culture.

Once posted, ads reach a highly targeted audience of job seekers who can quickly and directly apply via iHire’s platform. Then, the system automatically routes the application to the correct hiring manager based on the information in the job posting. Plus, candidates can use iHire’s job seeker tools to ensure they meet a position’s requirements. For example, iScore scores resumes against the requirements of a specific job posting, and Resume Review identifies common resume mistakes.

Further simplifying the recruiting process, Graham Media’s HR administrators receive email notifications when candidates apply, while the iHire platform’s multiuser features allow them to collaborate, view, and update job postings for their respective stations with their accounts tied to a corporate account.

Results

With iHire’s Job Wrap, Graham Media is saving valuable time and effort, as jobs are automatically pushed from its Careers page to iHire’s communities. In doing so, Graham Media has successfully published nearly 300 job ads over the course of 14 months, without involving extra time from its HR staff.

Graham Media is also finding qualified talent faster, without the need to dig through hundreds of irrelevant resumes. In fact, the company’s job postings on iHire communities have generated a 19.5% view-to-apply rate – nearly 20% of job seekers viewing Graham Media’s ads are applying. Notably, the industry average view-to-apply rate is just 12% for job postings on company career pages alone. This shows that Graham Media is hiring more effectively by expanding its recruiting toolbox with iHire’s niche communities.

All the while, Graham Media is promoting its brand throughout the recruiting process, which is supporting its goals of attracting long-term employees who can grow with the company.

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