Apple
Unbox
Yourself
Transformed Apple recruiting into a brand experience — celebrating passions, inspiring self-selection, and positioning a career at Apple as the ultimate unboxing.
Challenge
Apple’s recruiting needed a refresh. Traditional role-based tactics weren’t enough to reach the mix of active seekers and passive, highly sought-after candidates across retail, corporate, and engineering. The real challenge was to reframe what a career at Apple means - shifting the focus away from job titles and toward the passion and potential each individual could unlock.
Approach
To uncover authentic insights, we interviewed over 100 Apple employees around the globe, surfacing the motivations, values, and passions that fueled their work. From those conversations, we built six unique personas that became the foundation of our strategy and the creative idea “Unbox Yourself” – a global recruiting platform that positioned Apple careers as opportunities to unlock personal passion and potential.
Key elements of the approach:
Recruiting for Passions, Not Roles – shifting from geography- and role-specific personas to values-based personas.
Content Ecosystem – creating evergreen, agile storytelling that could flex across regions and roles while maximizing production ROI.
Cultural Integration – anchoring campaign beats to seasonal and cultural moments (graduation, product launches, holidays, New Year reassessment).
Cross-Platform Execution – extending across digital, Apple TV, Instagram, OOH, podcasts, keynotes, and even Siri-powered interactions.
Interactive Challenges – gamified “casting call” experiences that tested values over skills, helping candidates self-identify their best fit within Apple.
Execution
Unboxed Stories – films and features spotlighting Apple employees (from retail specialists to SVPs), pulling back the curtain on authentic career journeys.
Themed Campaign Waves – quarterly editorial calendar with tailored content (e.g., Unbox Your Potential for graduates, Unbox Your Future during product launch season).
OOH & Interactive Installations – bus shelters, puzzles, and large-scale experiences designed by Apple’s own engineers and creatives to intrigue and attract talent.
Unboxed Application – an inventive approach where applicants could “unbox” themselves with creative submissions, breaking away from traditional applications.
Siri Activation – turning Siri into a recruiter, asking candidates questions and directing them to apply via Apple devices.
Results & Impact
Positioned Apple as a “lighthouse brand” for global talent.
Enabled earlier “ah-ha” moments by meeting candidates where they were (passion spaces, cultural moments, mobile-first touchpoints).
Inspired self-selection among candidates, reducing unqualified applications and improving recruiting efficiency.
Elevated Apple’s brand perception among passive engineering and retail talent by connecting careers to values, creativity, and impact rather than just job functions.
Established a scalable, among candidates, reducing unqualified applications, and improving recruiting efficiencies.
