How Chili Piper got 7,500 job applicants from TikTok

Meryoli Arias
August 24, 2022
min to read

How Chili Piper got 7,500 job applicants from TikTok

Meryoli Arias
August 24, 2022
min to read

The “b’s” in B2B don’t stand for boring. 

Even still, there is too much boring in B2B.

And most B2B companies don’t dare dabble outside the safe confines of LinkedIn.

I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be that way. 

When Chili Piper — a B2B SaaS company that sells web scheduling software — made our debut on TikTok, we made a huge splash.

A being-featured-in-Forbes kind of splash.

A driving-thousands-of-applicants-and-changing-the-company-forever kind of splash

Here’s how we did it:

Why TikTok?

This was me joining Chili Piper in October 2021: 

I loved their values. I loved the diversity. I loved that 50% of management was female. I loved that they hired people from all over the world and empowered employees to work remotely. 

But when I started… it was even better than I imagined. 

So in my first few weeks as Chili Piper’s first official social media manager, I was on a mission: Show the world how cool we actually are.

Not long after, Alina, our Co-Founder and CEO, approached me with a crazy idea. 

Why don’t we try TikTok?

Me, loving crazy ideas, went head first. 

That first month, we didn’t have great results. But we learned a lot about what we wanted, and even more about what we didn’t want… so we came in strong for the second act.

After those initial lessons, we grew from 500 followers to 5,000 in a matter of weeks. As I’m writing this blog in August 2022, we have over 15,000 followers — a 37.5x increase from when we started in January. 

How we did it

When we set out to build our presence on TikTok, I knew I wanted to showcase our amazing diversity here at Chili Piper. 

I mean, we have over 200 employees from 180 cities in 40 countries. How much more diverse can you get?

We knew we wanted employees to submit videos of themselves… 

But as a social media manager, I’m also hyper-conscious of other people’s time. 

I needed to find a way to make it easy.

Here’s what I did:

1. Lead by example

When I first started asking people for videos, I mostly got crickets.
It made sense. 

I had only worked at Chili Piper for a few months when we kicked things off on LinkedIn. They didn’t know me. They didn’t trust me. They had no idea what I was going to do with their videos once I got them. 

I realized that nobody would feel comfortable sharing videos of themselves without seeing the final product. 

So I started recording and posting videos myself — that’s when people started getting excited. My first video got over 12K views that day… surprising because we only had 500 followers. 

@chili.piper And we are hiring more than +15 roles. Go to the link in our profile and APPLY🧡🌶 #inboundsales #remotework #remotejobs #fyp #b2b ♬ original sound - kennn 💝

2. Create a framework that’s super easy

I wanted to make sure we could showcase as many Pipers as possible. 

So when me and Maria (our social media contractor) finally found the template we ended up using, I thought… this is perfect! It can’t get any better than this!

All people had to do was look at the camera and point at things. No dancing. No talking. No singing. Literally just pointing.

So I summarized video filming best practices into a 1-page doc — you can download it by clicking here.

And my TikTok co-conspirator, Maria Alejandra Bracho, filmed this quick video showing people how they could film their own TikTok videos: 

We ended up getting submissions from more than 20 Pipers from around the world. 

3. Show the people what they want to see

Before I started working at Chili Piper, I was really inspired by their values.

And the longer I worked here, the more inspired I got.

So in making these videos, I wanted to put all the amazing things about the company front and center. 

In each of the videos, I wanted to showcase the awesome benefits of Chili Piper that makes me excited to work here — and that would make future Pipers excited to apply! 

@chili.piper Amazing right? 👀 If this looks like a job for you, APPLY NOW 🧡🌶 #remotework #remoteteam #b2bsaas #hiringnow ♬ It's All Coming Back To Me Now - JEENIE

In the videos, we highlighted those benefits. Things like: 

  • 50% female management
  • Unlimited vacations and annual company trip
  • 100% remote work
  • Coworking membership 
  • Any equipment you need to do your job
  • Generous health, dental, and vision insurance 

Lucia Avraamides, SDR at Chili Piper

4. Get in the mood

As a social media manager, I know that different social media platforms have different vibes.

While you can often use the same content on different platforms — one of our TikTok videos got 20,000 views on LinkedIn — you can’t just post the same thing on each of the different platforms. 

With TikTok, we kept everything fun and silly. 

And to help make our posts go viral, I chose a song that was currently trending and used hashtags related to remote work and B2B. Things like #workingremotely, #wfh, and #B2BTok.

@chili.piper We are hiring WORLDWIDE 🌎🌶 If you want to be part of the spiciest team on earth, APPLY NOW! 😎 #remotework #remotejob #hiringnow #workingremotely #jobapplication ♬ original sound - Matthew Biddulph

5. Find the right collaborators 

You can’t do social media in a vacuum. The entire point of social media is that it’s a community that brings all different kinds of people together. 

So find people who already have an audience of people that match your audience…and make content together!  

Maria Alice Gomes, SDR Growth Manager at Chili Piper

There are plenty of content creators willing to collaborate with cool companies — and I actually found a few that were already talking about us! 

And since it’s a little gauche to be the only one talking about how great Chili Piper is (even though we only tell the truth), we partnered with influencers like @itsatravelod and @viajerasnomadasdigitales.

It turns out our intuition was correct — we were about to attribute 1,000 Chili Piper applications through influencers alone!

Stay true to your values 

And don’t be boring. 

At Chili Piper, we do things differently. And we make an effort to bring different types of people together to make sure we don’t stay too the same. 

Alina Vandenberghe, Co-CEO and Co-Founder at Chili Piper

With this strategy, we were able to track at least 7,500 new applicants from TikTok. 

Many of whom came from Latin America — partly because we shared videos of some of our brilliant Latin American team members!

One of our most popular videos was of Tuany Domingos, rocking her awesome Brazilian scarf — that helped people realize (in a subtle way) that Brazilians (and anyone in the world for that matter) can apply as well! 

As I always say, the devil is in the details. 

What’s next for Chili Piper?

After this initiative, we built a community of people who want to work for remote companies like ours. So we’re trying to create content that they’ll find useful — or at least entertaining.

But more than that, we recognize that we’re one of the first B2B companies on TikTok.

And we’re one of the only companies that is fully remote.

Going forward, we’ll be sharing standards that all remote-first companies should follow. Because Chili Piper really does have the remote work thing in the bag.

The “b’s” in B2B don’t stand for boring. 

Even still, there is too much boring in B2B.

And most B2B companies don’t dare dabble outside the safe confines of LinkedIn.

I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be that way. 

When Chili Piper — a B2B SaaS company that sells web scheduling software — made our debut on TikTok, we made a huge splash.

A being-featured-in-Forbes kind of splash.

A driving-thousands-of-applicants-and-changing-the-company-forever kind of splash

Here’s how we did it:

Why TikTok?

This was me joining Chili Piper in October 2021: 

I loved their values. I loved the diversity. I loved that 50% of management was female. I loved that they hired people from all over the world and empowered employees to work remotely. 

But when I started… it was even better than I imagined. 

So in my first few weeks as Chili Piper’s first official social media manager, I was on a mission: Show the world how cool we actually are.

Not long after, Alina, our Co-Founder and CEO, approached me with a crazy idea. 

Why don’t we try TikTok?

Me, loving crazy ideas, went head first. 

That first month, we didn’t have great results. But we learned a lot about what we wanted, and even more about what we didn’t want… so we came in strong for the second act.

After those initial lessons, we grew from 500 followers to 5,000 in a matter of weeks. As I’m writing this blog in August 2022, we have over 15,000 followers — a 37.5x increase from when we started in January. 

How we did it

When we set out to build our presence on TikTok, I knew I wanted to showcase our amazing diversity here at Chili Piper. 

I mean, we have over 200 employees from 180 cities in 40 countries. How much more diverse can you get?

We knew we wanted employees to submit videos of themselves… 

But as a social media manager, I’m also hyper-conscious of other people’s time. 

I needed to find a way to make it easy.

Here’s what I did:

1. Lead by example

When I first started asking people for videos, I mostly got crickets.
It made sense. 

I had only worked at Chili Piper for a few months when we kicked things off on LinkedIn. They didn’t know me. They didn’t trust me. They had no idea what I was going to do with their videos once I got them. 

I realized that nobody would feel comfortable sharing videos of themselves without seeing the final product. 

So I started recording and posting videos myself — that’s when people started getting excited. My first video got over 12K views that day… surprising because we only had 500 followers. 

@chili.piper And we are hiring more than +15 roles. Go to the link in our profile and APPLY🧡🌶 #inboundsales #remotework #remotejobs #fyp #b2b ♬ original sound - kennn 💝

2. Create a framework that’s super easy

I wanted to make sure we could showcase as many Pipers as possible. 

So when me and Maria (our social media contractor) finally found the template we ended up using, I thought… this is perfect! It can’t get any better than this!

All people had to do was look at the camera and point at things. No dancing. No talking. No singing. Literally just pointing.

So I summarized video filming best practices into a 1-page doc — you can download it by clicking here.

And my TikTok co-conspirator, Maria Alejandra Bracho, filmed this quick video showing people how they could film their own TikTok videos: 

We ended up getting submissions from more than 20 Pipers from around the world. 

3. Show the people what they want to see

Before I started working at Chili Piper, I was really inspired by their values.

And the longer I worked here, the more inspired I got.

So in making these videos, I wanted to put all the amazing things about the company front and center. 

In each of the videos, I wanted to showcase the awesome benefits of Chili Piper that makes me excited to work here — and that would make future Pipers excited to apply! 

@chili.piper Amazing right? 👀 If this looks like a job for you, APPLY NOW 🧡🌶 #remotework #remoteteam #b2bsaas #hiringnow ♬ It's All Coming Back To Me Now - JEENIE

In the videos, we highlighted those benefits. Things like: 

  • 50% female management
  • Unlimited vacations and annual company trip
  • 100% remote work
  • Coworking membership 
  • Any equipment you need to do your job
  • Generous health, dental, and vision insurance 

Lucia Avraamides, SDR at Chili Piper

4. Get in the mood

As a social media manager, I know that different social media platforms have different vibes.

While you can often use the same content on different platforms — one of our TikTok videos got 20,000 views on LinkedIn — you can’t just post the same thing on each of the different platforms. 

With TikTok, we kept everything fun and silly. 

And to help make our posts go viral, I chose a song that was currently trending and used hashtags related to remote work and B2B. Things like #workingremotely, #wfh, and #B2BTok.

@chili.piper We are hiring WORLDWIDE 🌎🌶 If you want to be part of the spiciest team on earth, APPLY NOW! 😎 #remotework #remotejob #hiringnow #workingremotely #jobapplication ♬ original sound - Matthew Biddulph

5. Find the right collaborators 

You can’t do social media in a vacuum. The entire point of social media is that it’s a community that brings all different kinds of people together. 

So find people who already have an audience of people that match your audience…and make content together!  

Maria Alice Gomes, SDR Growth Manager at Chili Piper

There are plenty of content creators willing to collaborate with cool companies — and I actually found a few that were already talking about us! 

And since it’s a little gauche to be the only one talking about how great Chili Piper is (even though we only tell the truth), we partnered with influencers like @itsatravelod and @viajerasnomadasdigitales.

It turns out our intuition was correct — we were about to attribute 1,000 Chili Piper applications through influencers alone!

Stay true to your values 

And don’t be boring. 

At Chili Piper, we do things differently. And we make an effort to bring different types of people together to make sure we don’t stay too the same. 

Alina Vandenberghe, Co-CEO and Co-Founder at Chili Piper

With this strategy, we were able to track at least 7,500 new applicants from TikTok. 

Many of whom came from Latin America — partly because we shared videos of some of our brilliant Latin American team members!

One of our most popular videos was of Tuany Domingos, rocking her awesome Brazilian scarf — that helped people realize (in a subtle way) that Brazilians (and anyone in the world for that matter) can apply as well! 

As I always say, the devil is in the details. 

What’s next for Chili Piper?

After this initiative, we built a community of people who want to work for remote companies like ours. So we’re trying to create content that they’ll find useful — or at least entertaining.

But more than that, we recognize that we’re one of the first B2B companies on TikTok.

And we’re one of the only companies that is fully remote.

Going forward, we’ll be sharing standards that all remote-first companies should follow. Because Chili Piper really does have the remote work thing in the bag.

Meryoli Arias

Meryoli Arias is a the Senior Social Media Manager at Chili Piper. Besides social media, she loves learning new things, reading, and enjoying all cultural expressions. When she's not scrolling through social media or creating content, she's spending time with her loved ones and probably playing board games. Learn more about her remote-first mentality by following her on LinkedIn.

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