On one side, more homeless people than ever in France needed to help. And on the other side, as never before, The Salvation Army was lacking volunteers and professionals to help those who need it the most. We needed to find new ways to recruit as the traditional initiatives proved lacking efficiency.

The idea was to make the homeless and the Salvation Army help each other,

by giving homeless people the power to act: making them recruiters for the Salvation Army. Firstly, Homeless people became homeless recruiters, as they were in the best position to directly talk to our target audience: the 4 million commuters taking the subway to go to work. How? By turning around a common behavior of the homeless people in the Parisian metro: instead of going from wagon to wagon to ask for money, going there to propose job offers on the behalf of the salvation Army where people can directly apply by scanning a QR code presented to them. Secondly, the Homeless Recruiters didn’t stop there, and went on Linkedin, the professional social network, with the #hiring status, to connect to the platform users and propose them job offers.

4 million take the subway every day to go to work in Paris. That’s 4 million potential recruits. So the Salvation Army has found a way to reach out to them to offer them a new job as they were in their way to their current job. In France, people are used to see homeless people go from wagon top wagon of the metro to do long speeches to ask commuters for money. It’s so frequent, that the commuters have even become numb to those speeches. This time, the homeless people didn’t come to beg for money, but with a business proposition: a job offer. Putting a twist on an unfortunately common situation got the attention of passengers and potential recruits on their way to work. But the Homeless Recruiters have expanded their field of action, going to propose jobs to another place full of professionals open to work– Linkedin.

During one month, The Homeless Recruiters went from wagon to wagon, train to train, station to station, subway line to subway line, to deliver their speech and make job offers to as many potential recruits as possible. In the same time, the Homeless Recruiters went on Linkedin, the professional social network, with the #hiring status, to connect to the platform users and propose them job offers.

7 million media impressions

+285% increase in website visits

166 job offers shared

10170 candidates

+242% submitted applications