Download IQ Good Practice as PDF

including interview with Anna Stahl-Czechowska, public relations manager at the Berlin Regional Integration Network.

New strategic approach to recruiting participants via social media at Berlin RIN

Starting point/challenge
The “side-by-side” project in the Berlin Regional Integration Network (RIN) is a low-threshold mentoring programme for qualified women with a migration background and experience of being a refugee. The project is run by the provider Goldnetz gGmbH in line with the Canadian model. It involves sector and occupation-specific matching in which mentees are brought together with mentors from the same sector or the same occupation. Women in Berlin with professional experience and who are often multilingual support international skilled workers when applying for jobs and can also be on hand to support the mentees during the initial phase when starting their first job. The mentoring can also be used as a recruitment tool for companies by employees becoming involved as mentors and recruiting international skilled workers for their own business. Goldnetz is an experienced and well-connected training provider. However, it became clear over the course of its project work that the traditional recruitment methods of emails, fliers and distributing information via its own social media channels, together with the relevant networking, were not sufficient to effectively reach the programme’s target group. It was evident to the “side-by-side” project’s employees that the channels for accessing the target group were very complex. This meant new methods had to be found to successfully establish the programme.

Implementation of the strategic approach
In order to attract more participants onto the programme, the mentoring programme‘s employees identified a new strategic approach by means of modifying their public relations work. They relied less on flyers, brochures and websites and instead located themselves within the digital space where international skilled workers get their information. To start with, Goldnetz produced a “tile” with a post in German and images appropriate for use on social media. The tile was posted, for example, on the Berlin RIN’s Facebook account and LinkedIn channel and also on the “side by side” mentoring programme‘s LinkedIn channel. Next, Berlin RIN‘s public relations work established a connection with a migrant organisation (MO) and presented the existing information material about the training offer to the MO. The MO is active on a range of different social media channels and was able to circulate this information in the community language of Polish. The connection with this association was specifically selected because the organisation has very good access to qualified women from the Polish community in Berlin, one of the capital’s largest communities. The next step involved the person responsible for public relations at the MO working as a disseminator, or a kind of voluntary influencer, in order to advertise the mentoring programme. The MO is very active with their association on social media – on Instagram, LinkedIn and, in particular, on Facebook. It has, itself, established many different groups for Polish women and supports these on an ongoing basis. The association’s Facebook profile has approximately 6,400 followers and the Facebook groups created by the association, such as Polish mothers in Berlin, have more than 6,000 members. It was therefore important for the public relations work of the Berlin RIN to specifically connect the offer of the mentoring programme for women with precisely this migrant organisation in order to be able to target the intended group as accurately as possible

Conclusion
After just one week, 15 participants from the Polish community registered for the mentoring programme as a result of the initial post by the migrant organisation. Since then, the strategic approach of focusing public relations work on social media and its channels and stakeholders, and cooperating closely with migrant organisations in the process, has been increasingly used in the Berlin RIN. The subprojects also received training on participant recruitment via social media from the Berlin migrant organisation La Red, which has a great deal of expertise in this area. The Berlin RIN is also using the method via other projects on social media, for example those implemented by Minor – the Competence Centre for Immigration and Integration’s provider – in order to publicise its own offers in this way.