LWIA Winners Large-5_616x372

Finalists: Ashurst; Hogan Lovells (highly commended).

Shearman & Sterling's social media prowess secured it the HR innovation award.

The firm recognised that for prospective graduate recruits, communicating with them through websites such as Facebook was more likely to raise Shearman & Sterling's appeal, given that such candidates have grown up with social media and expect potential employers to be technologically savvy.

To that end, the firm's HR team launched two Facebook-based projects – a Facebook Live channel to create informal videos to connect with its large and active Facebook community (18,000+ followers), and a Facebook Messenger bot that uses AI to interact with graduates (called 'Dougie' for short).

The Facebook Live initiative has already had a greater impact than campus visits alone can generate, given the ability to target a wider range of audiences both domestically and internationally. The messenger bot means questions are responded to immediately, eliminating the need to manually answer hundreds of emails.

And newsletters are also sent via 'Dougie', attracting greater click-through rates than traditional email mailshots (31% vs 7%), making it a far more effective way to communicate with students.

Most notably of all, the social media campaign has not cost a penny to implement – Facebook Live is a free function, and 'Dougie' was created using free software called ManyChat.