How The Muse Helped The Washington Post Get in Front of Top Tech Talent

As a long-standing daily newspaper with prominent historical roots, The Washington Post is well-known in the world of journalism. But, as the industry itself has evolved with the rise and innovation of technology, The Post has transformed into a modern media company with a focus on building products that help their teams tell better stories.

In order to keep expanding their digital portfolio of products including app development, distributed news on social media, and interactive features, The Post knew they needed to prioritize recruiting and hiring next-generation tech talent.

While they had the benefit of overall brand recognition, The Post still faced a unique challenge with their hiring goals: They needed to differentiate themselves from mainstream media outlets that were also competing for talent with a background in technology. At the same time, they had to contend with traditional internet and technology companies who already had an established presence among top tech talent.

The Post partnered with The Muse to build out their talent marketing program and create an employer brand strategy to establish themselves as a media technology company, not just a newspaper. They needed to show candidates how working in tech at The Post is different than working for a multinational technology company.

“We’re competing for specialized talent that’s in high demand, so where we can win is really describing our mission and our culture inside The Post. Platforms like The Muse help us share those stories and build that case so we can actually attract someone from the bigger companies to want to work for a mission and for a culture like The Post.”

— Austin Graff, Talent Marketing and Branding Specialist at The Washington Post

The Muse worked with The Post to showcase the company culture inside their New York and Washington, DC offices, and highlight niche aspects of the employee experience. Their company profile spotlights people from their tech team explaining what they do and how they grow their skills every day.

Additionally, The Muse publishes a carefully curated list of great places to work each month and features The Post to help them reach active and passive job seekers. Most companies see two times average profile views when included in these articles.

The Results

“We’ve been introduced to hundreds of thousands of new people through The Muse who now know The Post is a media-tech company.”

— Austin Graff

Since partnering with The Muse, The Post has seen a notable increase in brand impressions. “We’ve been introduced to hundreds of thousands of new people through The Muse who now know The Post is a media-tech company,” says Austin Graff, Talent Marketing and Branding Specialist at The Post.

The Post has been able to repurpose their Muse content to boost their candidate communications strategy and recruitment marketing efforts. They share the photos of their offices with people who are applying to The Post as well as with new hires during the onboarding process to give them a sense of what the office is like, whether they’re in NYC or DC.

Additionally, every time The Post makes one of The Muse’s lists of great places to work, they share it both internally on their intranet, Slack, and externally on their @WashPostLife social media channels celebrating their company culture.

“Every single day is interesting. I’ve been here at The Post for five years now and, believe it or not, at the end of every single day, I have something that I learned.”

— Bhavya Kilari, Engineering Lead at The Washington Post

Building on their employee testimonials and the idea of using your employees as key storytellers, The Post also encourages employee advocacy by inviting members of their team to be a part of their #washpostlife content series where an employee takes over-posting on Instagram for one day to show what a typical workday is like for them at The Post.