And got these replies.

Turns out, he’s absolutely serious and what started as perhaps an ‘off-the-cuff’ idea has become a low cost, high volume, and according to McKay himself, high quality response. Why might this recruitment approach work?

1. He’s the Creative Director of Saatch & Saatchi.
The power of the personal brand is evident. Whilst Mckay himself may not be a business celebrity in the league of a Steve Jobs, he nevertheless works for a globally renowned corporate brand that carries with it a cache by association. It’s probably a fair guess to say that Mike may not have got his response if he instead worked as CD for Hoxton Best Kebab. The lesson for employers is that your senior people need to leverage the power of their brand, especially in the Twitterverse where ‘normal’ people feel like they have the chance to directly communicate with the top guy.

2. He’s pitching to the right audience
Mike only has 634 followers when he tweeted his soon-to-be famous tweet – that’s a pretty low number in the era of auto-follows and automated follower growing software. However, he has received several dozen replies from individuals who appear to be legit candidates. How can this be? Well it demonstrates that numbers are not everything – what matters, is the quality of your following community – real people, who actually are interested in what you have to say. And the people who are following Mike turn out to be advertising executives, content people, editors, and copywriters – in other words, the very audience you might expect the winning applicant might come from. The lesson for employers (& recruiters) here is that you can launch a successful twitter recruitment campaign so long as you are confident that as your audience is the relevant talent community.

3. He’s made is really easy to apply
Read the tweet again. Funniest tweet gets the job. No links to further work, no email to send resume or CV, no request for ID, references or anything of the sort. Want the job? Spend the time it takes to knock out 140 characters on your smart phone. The lesson to employers here transcends social media – make your application strategy simple and low cost for the potential applicant and you will maximise your volume return.