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Overview
Xylem Tree Experts was growing quickly and needed to hire skilled tradespeople across multiple rural markets. But their team was already at capacity and could not take on more manual recruiting work.
They needed a way to increase applicant flow, expand sourcing beyond Indeed, and improve visibility into career opportunities without creating extra lift for the internal team.
John
Head of HR
The challenge
Xylem needed to drive applicant flow across 24 locations while keeping recruiter workload manageable.
Traditional channels were not enough. The team needed to:
- Reach more skilled tradespeople in rural areas
- Expand sourcing beyond Indeed
- Improve visibility into open roles
- Avoid getting buried in high volumes of lower-intent applicants
This was especially important because Xylem’s target candidate was not consistently active on traditional job boards, and the hiring team did not have extra bandwidth to manually screen large volumes of applicants.
The solution
Reelist launched geo-targeted social hiring campaigns designed to reach tradespeople in the markets where Xylem needed them most.
Campaign content was delivered in English and Spanish, with optimization across channel mix, targeting, messaging, and delivery. Instead of relying on static postings alone, Xylem used social-first recruiting to meet candidates where they already spend time and present opportunities in a format that felt more natural and engaging.
The results
- High visibility: 14x more reach than traditional job boards
- More qualified candidates: 3x higher click-thru-rate (CTR)
- Volume where it’s hardest: 10x more applicants in 24 rural markets
Why it worked
- Reelist reached candidates outside the usual job board audience
- Geo-targeting helped Xylem focus on the markets where hiring was hardest
- Social content better matched how skilled trades candidates prefer to discover jobs
- Reelist helped filter interest earlier, so the team spent less time on low-quality volume
- Bilingual delivery improved accessibility and broadened reach
Bottom line
Reelist helped Xylem grow applicant flow across rural markets without creating extra recruiting lift for the internal team. By expanding beyond traditional job boards and using geo-targeted social campaigns, Xylem was able to reach more of the right tradespeople, improve early-stage candidate quality, and move qualified talent to hiring managers faster.
