Spotlight: Using Brolly To Drive Smarter Recruitment

When you’re hiring for front-line government roles, compliance can’t be an afterthought – and this NSW department has the backup it needs.

The challenge: managing social media records manually

When you’re trying to recruit thousands of people into critical government roles every year, you need good tools behind the scenes.

The NSW Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ) employs around 26,000 people, and works with children, young people, adults and families to support vibrant, sustainable and inclusive communities.

Around 85% of these positions are front-line jobs, which can be difficult to fill.

To tackle this, the department established a new marketing and communications team within talent acquisition team led by Anthony Pace. The goal? Build DCJ’s employer brand and drive people to the right roles—at the right time.

The challenge: small team, big recruitment demand

Anthony, Manager Marketing & Campaigns, knew early on that social media would be critical in reaching talent.

"We set up a dedicated NSW DCJ Careers Facebook page to highlight job opportunities, share staff stories, and show what it’s like to work with us," he explains.

“While we occasionally advertise on Linkedin for specific roles, Facebook has become our primary platform for community building.”

In just 15 months, the page has grown to over 15,000 followers—a result of storytelling, engaging video content, and initiatives like ‘New Job Thursdays’.

They regularly feature voices from the front lines – from Aboriginal community workers to youth justice officers – who speak about why their work matters.

As their metrics show, this content is building connections with potential candidates. But as their engagement grew, so did the possible risks.

Why did they choose Brolly?

"We occasionally get negative sentiment."

The team wanted the difficult interactions kept on record alongside the positive ones.

In Anthony’s previous roles, monitoring comments meant taking screenshots.

"When you’re dealing with thousands of comments a month, that’s just not sustainable.”

So, when the corporate communications team recommended Brolly – a tool used with DCJ’s main social accounts – Anthony jumped on board.

It wasn’t just a compliance requirement as part of NSW Government policy; they also saw its time-saving potential.

The solution: recordkeeping that’s always on

Brolly automatically captures and stores every interaction on their Facebook careers page in a central archive that Anthony’s team can access anytime.

"As a small team where social media is just one part of what we do, time is everything,” he explains.

With Brolly in place, they don’t have to second-guess whether content has been captured. If anything contentious comes up or someone questions something they’ve shared, they know the records are complete and accessible.

So far, they haven’t had to dig into the archive, but knowing it’s there gives them peace of mind.

"There will be a time when we need it. It gives us confidence in our compliance."

Laying the groundwork for more strategic reporting

With 500 interactions archived every month – and 5,000 since implementation – the team is now looking at how they can optimize Brolly’s reporting features.

"We currently lean on Meta for engagement metrics and we’re keen to use Brolly data more extensively,” Anthony adds.

“There’s potential to use it to track sentiment and show the impact of our content. These extra layers of reporting can help us better understand our audience and evolve our strategy."

His advice to others?

"Find a tool you can trust, especially when working in the public sector. We have that with Brolly – if you ever need those records, you know they’re there." Anthony, Manager Marketing & Campaigns

Free resource: How to use the Brolly app in Hootsuite

The practical next step — used by the government teams Brolly works with.

The US parallel

State agencies in the US face the same mechanics: official accounts under state records acts, public replies around contested topics, and edits that change the story unless something keeps the earlier version. What NSW Department of Communities and Justice keeps on record is the same record a US agency is asked to produce.

See Brolly for state government, or find your state’s response windows and statutes in the 50-state guide.