Bloomberg's Work Wise newsletter curates career development content for young jobseekers

Bloomberg has used a tailor-made four-part newsletter series to serve Generation Z and millennial jobseekers editorial content around career development.

Using Bloomberg Media’s human-centred research and prototyping group, BHIVE, it found that 18-35 year-olds were ‘over-indexing on company and people’s pages’. The business news publisher then saw an opportunity to see if they could cater to this market of university under- and post-graduates in a new way at this critical time in their lives.

Coming at a time when news organisations are being encouraged to use data to underpin editorial strategy, Bloomberg set up the Work Wise tool which surveyed users with a career calculator, quizzed them on industry questions, and gave them the option to sign up for the Work Wise newsletter which provides job-related articles.

How did it fare? 65 per cent of newsletter subscribers were net new and newsletter click-through rate was four times the website average.

"We heard loud and clear that this group is ambitious and looking to grow professionally," said Karen Johnson, head of design research, Bloomberg Media.

"Aggregate data from our career calculator brings this to life via a simple state: the most common dream job of this Work Wise audience was chief executive. All of these signals start to help us to strengthen our understanding of how Bloomberg can serve the Work Wise community."

The subsequent articles were commissioned in advance of the launch of Work Wise. The four themes (The Balance, The Money, The Career, The Pivot) are sent to users on a weekly basis once they complete the quiz and sign up for the series.

"The careful balance we struck here was creating a product that was compelling and engaging but timeless enough to work over the lifespan of Work Wise," Johnson added.

Managing editor David Rovella and his team also created bespoke content for newsletter subscribers around popular themes like job satisfaction and salary expectations.

But the newsletter also includes top-line takeaways, to make sure there is something in there for those less inclined to click through onto an article.

However, the project proved to resonate with readers and provided valuable feedback to the team. Around 90 per cent indicated they would sign up for the series again. Most described Work Wise as "useful" (72 per cent), “interesting” (88 per cent), and as an experience that got them to think of their career in new ways (75 per cent).

Half of respondents also expressed that content that would help them to stay relevant in their jobs and industry would be sought-after, and one-third of users wanted more access to mentorship and meaningful industry connections.

The exercise also yielded a useful breakdown of its survey audience: two-thirds women and 62 per cent of our audience is younger than 35 years old. This is key insight, said Johnson, as it gives Bloomberg room to think about how it can serve this next generation of working professionals.

"The opportunity to build a rapport with this audience - that could lead to subscriptions down the road - is a meaningful one," said Johnson.

"Currently Bloomberg’s product team is exploring ways to harness the success of Bloomberg Work Wise by designing new ways to push beyond the minimum possible outcome and looking at Work Wise as a platform that could potentially be used for other interactive content experiences."

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