PeopleReady, one of the top industrial staffing agencies in North America, required a digital recruitment solution powered by PeopleScout’s proprietary talent technology, AffinixTM, to attract and engage candidates.
SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS
Direct sourcing solutions with increased reach via SEO
100% automated application, selection and onboarding process
Mobile-first, easy application complying with all North American state and province laws
SCOPE & SCALE
PeopleReady attracts more than one million candidates annually to staffing and short-term labour positions. The client required a digital recruitment solution that increased reach by creating virtual talent communities of prospective candidates, while also providing a seamless online application experience that could be completed on a mobile device in under 20 minutes.
SITUATION
PeopleReady has invested heavily in innovative, mobile-first work scheduling and dispatching technologies but lacked a digital online sourcing solution to attract and engage candidates. PeopleReady selected PeopleScout’s Affinix recruitment technology platform to replace its existing solution. Affinix enhances the online candidate experience and increases conversion rates by solving the following challenges:
Simplify the previously complicated job posting process by distributing job openings to multiple sourcing channels immediately by creating just one post in Affinix
Implement direct sourcing to channels such as Indeed, Google for Jobs and niche platforms
Improve email integration with assessment vendors that previously had high drop off rates
SOLUTION
An engaging, mobile-optimised apply experience that guides candidates through application, online selection, employment form completion, WOTC, W4 and I9 processes via a safe, remote process
Direct integration with four external vendors to ensure the entire application process can be completed within the browser, with no interruptions from external emails or links
Highly localised job recommendations
RESULTS
TARGET LAUNCH ACHIEVED
Solution launched within 15 weeks, on time and under budget
RECEIVED MAJORITY OF MOBILE APPLICATIONS
80% of candidates apply via a mobile device
INCREASED CONVERSION RATES
15% increase in conversion rates within the first two weeks of go-live
CLIENT FEEDBACK
“The PeopleScout team allowed us to design a candidate flow that met the needs of our business. The team was quick to pivot and solution as areas of opportunity were identified for improving the candidate experience. Launching a solution with operational reporting allowed us to immediately monitor candidate flow to allow for quick adjustments of sourcing strategy. Very positive partnership with the entire implementation and technology teams.”
Recruitment Marketing: How to Stand Apart in the Battle for Great Talent
In today’s candidate-driven talent market, job seekers are more discerning and judicious in selecting a potential employer. To gain their trust and inspire them to choose you over your competitors, you need to ensure that your recruitment and marketing efforts are aligned.
What’s more, the recruitment marketing ecosystem is evolving at an accelerated pace. Tactics that worked in years past may no longer move the needle with candidates. So, how can employers better attract, engage, entice and hire top talent? In this ebook, Recruitment Marketing: How to Stand Apart in the Battle for Great Talent, we explore how employers can build a world-class recruitment marketing program.
In this ebook you will learn:
Establishing your brand narrative as a north star
Building authenticity and trust with your employees’ voice
Connect to talent with data-driven insights
Differentiating your brand through human experience
Civil Service Fast Stream: Boosting Diversity with a Bold New Influencer Campaign
As one of the largest employers in the UK, the Civil Service doesn’t struggle for applications for its Fast Stream graduate programme. However, as the entity that supports the government in implementing policies, it fights against perceptions that it only employs people from elite backgrounds. The Civil Service Fast Stream turned to PeopleScout for a bold new recruitment marketing campaign to improve diversity amongst its early careers talent.
3,200+Increase in Applicants from Diverse Backgrounds
18,056Views of Influencer Video on YouTube in Less Than 48 Hours
351,304Impressions Across Social Media via Nano-Influencers
Situation
The Fast Stream aims to be the most inclusive graduate scheme in the UK and has a goal for the diversity of its workforce to help ensure that every government department reflects all of the communities they serve. However, research they commissioned revealed a misperception, particularly amongst those within underrepresented diversity groups, that the Civil Service Fast Stream represents the elite and is not diverse. Whilst they weren’t in need of more applicants, they needed to increase the diversity of their candidates.
They turned to PeopleScout for a Talent Advisory solution that counteracted the perceptions of the Civil Service as being ‘stuffy’, ‘outdated’ or ‘inaccessible’. The campaign needed to show the Civil Service Fast Stream as accessible to all graduates, regardless of their background, and increase representation of applicants from specific diversity groups to better reflect communities in the UK.
Solution
Taking a Cue from Consumer Marketing
Given the high number of applications the Fast Stream receive year-on-year, and the campaign objectives to diversify them, we made the strategic decision not to proceed with a traditional graduate media campaign.
Instead, we turned to online influencers.
Whilst widely used in consumer marketing, influencer marketing is relatively new to the recruitment space. It was certainly innovative for the Civil Service and definitely not one our target audience would expect them to use.
Finding the Right Influencer
Identifying the right influencer, with the relevant following, would help us to:
Increase credibility with underrepresented groups
Remove perceived barriers around government work and the type of people who can get involved
Ask the right questions—those on the minds of the target audience
We found Vee Kativhu, an author and influencer who fit these criteria. Vee started her YouTube channel after getting into Oxford University and realising that, as a black woman, she was a minority. She uses her platform to help those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds get access to the best information and advice so that anyone can achieve their dreams, no matter their background.
Continuing our theme of telling real-life stories, Vee spent a day with three Fast Streamers and produced a ‘day in the life’ video, which she posted to her YouTube channel with over 250,000 subscribers. She also promoted the video through her Instagram and LinkedIn profiles.
We also engaged 12 diverse nano-influencers, with targeted followings, to reshape and share the video amongst their networks—further expanding the reach.
Results
The campaign boosted applications from their target demographics by over 3,200, including significant increases in interest from candidates from ethnic minority backgrounds, from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, from the LGBTQ+ community as well as those with disabilities.
Vee’s video received 18,056 views in less than 48 hours. It went on to achieve over 36,000 views with over 1,200 likes. Over the four-week social media campaign, Vee and the nano-influencers achieved a combined reach of 351,304 impressions and 2,436 engagements.
“Such an amazing video, Vee! Super informative, and I love the positive approach to a more diverse Civil Service.”
YouTube comment
By taking an innovative approach to reach their target audience, the Civil Service Fast Stream received a cost-effective campaign that delivered on their diversity recruitment goals.
“Our new attraction strategy, particularly in the innovative use of working with influencers, really captured our vision of a skilled, innovative and ambitious Civil Service equipped for the future—one that reflects the country we serve.”
Talent Acquisition Leader at the Civil Service
“I love the new look and feel of Fast Stream attraction, especially as it’s generating feedback that ‘you don’t normally see this kind of thing in the Civil Service’. Bold, different and refreshing.”
Talent Acquisition Leader at the Civil Service
AT A GLANCE
COMPANY The Civil Service Fast Stream
PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS Talent Advisory
ABOUT THE CIVIL SERVICE FAST STREAM The Fast Stream is an award-winning graduate programme for the Civil Service, developing talented, high-potential people to become future Civil Service leaders. Annually, the programme recruits approximately 1,000 people nationwide across 15 different leadership and specialist development schemes.
By Paula Simmons, Director of Employer Brand & Communications Strategy
As your organisation continues to invest in creating a more diverse and inclusive team of employees, it’s important to ensure you are relying on the most up-to-date information about recruiting the right people and meeting their needs during your hiring process. There are many assumptions that have become part of accepted recruiting wisdom, but are these methods still effective for interacting with diverse, modern job seekers?
Choosing the Right Channels
In the past, when employers have wanted to recruit from under-represented groups, they have traditionally relied on limited media targeting, but this doesn’t take into account what we know about candidate behaviour. For example, we know that just because a person looks at a certain type of content in their everyday life, it doesn’t mean they will use that specialised media in their job search.
Research has shown that candidates look at channels offering roles related to their profession and then assess employers to ensure they are inclusive. So, employers should focus on targeting the right professional channels with the right messaging. When candidates from under-represented groups are searching for jobs, the right job title might be enough to entice them to review an advert—but whether they apply is influenced by what they read and what they hear about how an organisation treats its people.
Adjusting Job Descriptions to Attract More Diverse Candidates
To ensure an inclusive process, using the right verbiage in job postings is essential. Your job advert copy should feel inclusive and should also reflect the career level of candidates. Many talent leaders are familiar with the research that shows women are less likely to apply for roles when they feel they do not meet 100% of the criteria, whereas men will apply if they meet just some of them. Often, women just don’t want to waste their time on an application if they believe they would be automatically rejected.
To overcome this, employers should list only the essential criteria. As the list of criteria gets longer, the applicant pool for that job will become less diverse. Staying with the example of attracting more women, recruitment communications should include content that showcase the voices and stories of women at all levels to demonstrate they are welcome at your organisation and will have the opportunity to progress. The same principle can be applied to any demographic group.
Change won’t happen overnight. When it comes to engaging with candidates from under-represented groups, it’s about building an employer brand that appeals to multiple demographics and fosters a sense of belonging in an organisation—and making sure that during each part of the candidate journey individuals from all walks of life are supported so you find the best people to fill your roles.
Employee Engagement at King’s College Hospital: Saying a Big “Thank You” to Nurses
As one of the busiest NHS trusts in the UK, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust turned to PeopleScout for help with attracting nurses and other clinical professionals. Learn how we helped the Trust say a big “thank you” to their staff with a larger-than-life employee engagement campaign.
300Pieces of Artwork
18Installations Across 3 Sites
50%Increase in Peer Recognition Amongst Staff
13,159Thank-yous Sent to Staff
King’s College National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust is one of the busiest trusts in the UK, providing healthcare services for a population of over 1 million people. It supports numerous clinics and hospitals, including King’s College Hospital, a leading teaching hospital and trauma centre serving several boroughs in southeast London. Their vision is to hire brilliant, diverse staff who provide outstanding care for their patients and continue to educate and innovate for the future of medicine.
The Challenge
King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust came to PeopleScout with a challenge. They were, like many other healthcare organisations, struggling to recruit for clinical roles such as nursing.
To address this, our initial objective was to develop a “Why King’s” message for an employer brand campaign. But after conducting focus groups with employees, it became clear that, to fix the attraction issue, we needed to start with employee engagement.
Retention of staff wasn’t an issue—King’s was overarchingly seen as a place where, with the right motivation, employees could grow in their career. The problem was an overall feeling amongst staff that there was a lack of recognition and appreciation from senior leadership. Whilst there was a great deal of pride and loyalty within teams, there was no strong sense of unity across the five sites within the Trust.
Before we could go out with an authentic employer brand message, we needed to show employees that they are valued, encourage staff recognition and galvanize the organisation.
And we needed to do this on a big, Trust-wide scale.
The Strategy
We designed an employee engagement campaign that would not only recognise employees, but would also be a big, bold, morale-boosting showcase of Kings’ values:
Always aiming higher
Working together
Inspiring confidence in our care
Little did we know just how important this message would become as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world. As the UK began clapping for the NHS in March 2020, we were designing a campaign that would greet the King’s staff on the frontlines and serve as a constant reminder of their incredible work, both before and throughout the pandemic.
This was so much more than an attraction campaign. It was our ‘Big Thank You’ to those who had sacrificed so much to keep us all safe.
Bringing It to Life
Six Days. 166 Participants.
As soon as lockdown restrictions lifted, we safely photographed and filmed people from across a range of clinical and non-clinical roles from all of King’s sites. Staff gave up valuable break time to take part in something that honoured their colleagues as well as recognised their own contributions.
350 Thank-Yous
Using comments made about participating staff members by their colleagues, we created 350 thank-yous—for both individual participants and general messages to all staff.
300 Pieces of Artwork. 18 Installations Across Three Main Sites.
We used the secondary colour palette from the NHS brand to create something that would stand out from the usual NHS blue to celebrate our King’s stars. With 300 pieces of eye-catching collateral in tow, we plastered our larger-than-life installations across three main sites, including a huge projection onto the outside of the hospital at their central location. Images went up on walls; inside and outside of buildings; on fence railings, stairs and windows.
Imagine the feeling: Arriving for another exhausting shift on the COVID frontlines to see a 100-square-meter personalised message of gratitude to you, from your employer, projected on the outside of your workplace for all your colleagues and the local community to see.
That’s recognition on a big scale.
Not only did the installations delight staff, they also expressed the appreciation of King’s leadership and echoed the community’s warmth and gratitude for the Trust and the wider NHS.
Results
In times of unprecedented turmoil, unimaginable pressure and unbelievable sadness, this uplifting campaign created a feeling of belonging, camaraderie and engagement amongst staff. As COVID-19 raged, what had started as an idea to recognise and celebrate those who brought the King’s values to life, evolved to become a wider message for all, “Thank you to all of you, for everything—and whatever comes next, we’re all in this together.”
The campaign has been instrumental in building a sense of pride not just in individual teams, but in the Trust as a whole. We’ve helped create positive advocates who are proud to be Team King’s and who contribute to a culture of recognition and gratitude. As a result of this campaign:
There was a 50% increase in the number of recognitions made by staff to their colleagues following the campaign.
13,159 thank-you letters and badges were sent out to all staff.
Their Chief Nurse is beyond thrilled with the results. Not only with the execution (which has also, on a practical level, brightened up some of the older hospital buildings), but with the impact she directly attributes to this campaign—renewed feelings of inclusion, recognition and engagement across the King’s staff.
“You’ve captured the people and heart of King’s and brought our values to life. The staff response to these images has been extraordinary and has created a real buy-in and the internal buzz that we were after.”
Nicola Ranger, Chief Nurse & Executive Director of Midwifery, King’s College Hospital
In addition to the employee engagement benefits, the Trust is leveraging the content in their on-going talent attraction and recruitment efforts via a bespoke careers portal and targeted recruitment marketing campaigns. We created a video for each person we interviewed to showcase King’s employer value proposition (EVP) and communicate the opportunities they offer.
This feel-good, reputation-healing employee engagement project will have an impact on the King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust workforce for years to come.
AT A GLANCE
COMPANY King’s College NHS Foundation Trust
PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS Talent Advisory
ABOUT King’s College NHS Foundation Trust provides healthcare services through numerous clinics and hospitals, including King’s College Hospital, a leading teaching hospital and trauma centre serving several boroughs in southeast London.
Talent attraction means grabbing a candidate’s attention and in this day and age that is not an easy task. Every day, we’re bombarded with between 4,000 and 10,000 ads. Naturally, we don’t give every one of them our full attention; our brains screen out the majority that they consider irrelevant, so we don’t get overwhelmed. Recruitment messages—designed to grow awareness and excitement around job opportunities—are just one subset of ads fighting for our attention in this intense daily contest.
In such a ruthless environment, talent attraction techniques have evolved and adapted. Modern recruitment marketing now draws heavily on consumer marketing practices and technology to ensure that recruiting organisations create clear space between themselves and their competitors. This optimises the likelihood that their messages will receive the attention of the right candidates and fuel growth in healthy pipelines for future vacancies.
This article will walk you through four strategic pillars to succeed in this hugely competitive space for top talent.
Talent Attraction Pillar One: Establishing Your Brand Narrative as a North Star
To attract top talent, you need to tell a vivid story about your unique employer value proposition, or EVP. This proposition should clearly communicate the compelling elements of your employment offer, as well as the behaviors and values you expect of candidates in return.
This narrative allows candidates to make an informed decision about whether your organisation is somewhere they aspire to work and somewhere they can have an influence. But, it also ensures that the people who do go on to apply are in tune with your company values; are motivated to be a part of your team’s mission; and are ready to take on the particular challenges associated with their role.
Recruitment marketing is the task of telling that story—why talent should want to work for you. Specifically, it’s about telling it:
To the right people, at the right time
Consistently, with targeted content and experiences that develop a candidate’s understanding of—and trust in—your company
In exciting and unexpected ways to stand out from the competition
Changing jobs is a significant life event fueled by a complex and highly emotional decision-making process. More than ever, candidates are searching for an employer that exhibits a shared set of values and work that they find meaningful. This is even more apparent in the Millennial and Gen Z members of the workforce. As such, a well-articulated employee value proposition can provoke an emotive response from candidates; give them a first glimpse into your company culture; and differentiate you from your competitors for talent. Without a clearly defined employer brand story, the guiding North Star of your strategy is missing.
Talent Attraction Pillar Two: Build Authenticity & Trust with Your Employees’ Voice
When considering whether to apply for a role, candidates will evaluate the authenticity of your brand claims and develop perceptions of what it’s really like to work for you. Therefore, when it comes to the credibility of your messages, the sources that deliver them are all important. Appetite for glossy corporate advertising is low; candidates are looking for trusted spokespeople to reveal the real story.
According to Edelman’s brand trust report, nearly seven in 10 people globally use one or more advertising avoidance strategy.
Personal experience, earned media, and peer-to-peer conversations are far more influential than owned media and paid advertising in the battle for brand trust.
Industry experts and regular employees are seen as significantly more credible spokespeople for a brand than the company’s CEO.
Similarly, candidates are savvy to corporate clichés and empty promises. Alternatively, they will use resources like Glassdoor and Indeed to seek out the opinions of existing employees who have previously road-tested an employee experience.
Of course, you can’t control everything that’s written about your brand online, but you can empower your most engaged employees to be the voice of your brand by sharing their own experiences. Plus, personal stories will provide you with credible evidence to support your employer value proposition and build credibility amongst your external brand audiences. It can be easy to overcomplicate advocacy; the key is to make it a fun and celebratory process. For instance:
Make sharing simple. There are many content amplification tools that will allow employees to access your employer brand content and repost it to their own social channels in seconds.
Introduce a little competition. Award points to employees for sharing their own stories and reposting those of their colleagues.
Make advocacy rewarding. What do your advocates get in return for being active brand ambassadors? Social media training? Networking opportunities?
But, don’t just expect employees to go off and create great content; you’ll need to offer support. So, consider setting content creation challenges with detailed guidelines to keep them energised and engaged.
Talent Attraction Pillar Three: Connect to Talent with Data-Driven Insights
Top talent doesn’t need to actively look for new opportunities because, like in the consumer world, offers have already started coming to them. Nowadays, passive and active candidate status is no longer clear cut. Whilst some people are actively looking for jobs, it would be incorrect to label everyone else passive and disinterested in new opportunities.
In fact, candidates expect to be approached with new opportunities. A whopping 70% of candidates are passive—open to new opportunities but not actively seeking them out. In such a competitive market, you need to engage your future workforce before the demand to hire them exists.
So, instead of playing the numbers game and hoping that the right person is out there somewhere, wouldn’t it be better to have an existing relationship with the people we think would be perfect for the job? And, better still, to know exactly their level of interest in new opportunities so that, when we do approach them, we know it’s a welcome advance? Fortunately, this is all made possible if we build high-quality, data-driven talent pipelines that provide recruiters with live insights into candidate interest levels and improve their efficiency. Below are three steps you can take to start building talent pipelines.
Pillar Four: Differentiate Your Brand Through Human Experiences
Let’s reimagine the marketing funnel as the journey of a single candidate. Armed with your compelling employer value proposition, the task throughout this journey is to bring the promises of that proposition to life for candidates and reinforce your brand messages so that they build a preference for your organisation.
In other words, rather than just telling candidates why you should be their preferred choice of employer, show them at every touchpoint.
Remember when we referred to your employer brand as your North Star? This is exactly what we meant by that: Use your employer brand and value proposition as a guiding force when crafting all of your recruitment communications and experiences. The more consistently and distinctively your value proposition is expressed throughout the candidate journey (and beyond into the employee lifecycle), the more your brand reputation will align to the identity that you want to portray.
As an example, if you claim to be an employer that cares about employee wellbeing, show candidates from the start by supporting them through the recruitment process with deep empathy. Likewise, if you claim to be an employer that fosters innovation, ensure that your communications are fresh and different.
The way that candidates experience your organisation throughout the candidate journey will show them everything they need to know about how your company treats customers and colleagues. That perception, once created, is hard to shift. If you treat candidates with dignity and show them how their time is valued, most will walk away from the recruitment process feeling positive about the brand you represent—whether they were successful or not. This means that you’re more likely to be the beneficiary of positive word-of-mouth advertising from that individual, as well as ensure that they’re more likely to reengage with you in the future should another, more appropriate, opportunity arise. That could be next week, next month or next year. The long game matters. A human-centric approach is different and will certainly stand out amongst the numerous companies that still facilitate an impersonal hiring process.
Making The Right Match
When these four strategic pillars work cohesively together, they allow you to seek out top talent and start conversations with potential employees wherever they prefer to consume content. Then, you can convert candidates to the next stage of the recruitment process by delivering content that responds to behavioural triggers and underlying candidate motivations. Finally, you can differentiate your organisation from your competitors with human experiences that bring your employer brand to life in unexpected and exciting ways.
Expanding your talent pool amid turbulent times can be difficult. As businesses navigate reopening and hiring amid the surge of the Delta variant of COVID-19, many are struggling to fill their open roles with the talent they need. Combined with the shortage of overseas workers due to Brexit, research from accountancy and advisory firm BDO shows that UK businesses are experiencing disruption to productivity.
Notably, an HGV driver shortage resulted in nationwide fuel shortage. Plus, companies in the healthcare, retail and hospitality sectors are suffering from staff absences, with workers isolating due to COVID-19 infections.
At the same time, millions of workers are also planning to change careers: Data released by Aviva showed that 87% of workers surveyed said they were re-evaluating their careers, whilst nearly one in 10 said they intended to start a new career.
In this article, we’ll explain why people are choosing to change careers, share common skills you should look out for in your talent pool expansion, and provide suggestions for how to create a reskilling programme that will work for your organisation.
How the Talent Pool is Evolving: Why Are Workers Changing Careers?
As a result of the pandemic and the tragic losses that came with it, people were faced with a reminder that every day is not guaranteed. This realisation caused many to rethink their life choices and shift to prioritise their health, loved ones, hobbies and the things they truly enjoy. For many, this included rethinking their career path and goals—including exploring job opportunities that align with their passions.
Source: Prudential
As an employer, you can capitalise on this migration by offering competitive employment packages complete with work/life balance and promoting those benefits via recruitment marketing techniques. More precisely, beyond compensation and flexible work arrangements, show candidates how you will challenge them and help them grow in their career.
Building a Talent Pool: Identifying Transferable Skills in Workers Changing Careers
When searching for talent, you might not consider looking in certain industries or job types because you’re unsure whether the skills developed in those roles will match up with what you need for your business. However, 57% of UK workers are willing to retrain, with mid-career workers (aged 31-40) showing the most willingness at 64%.
Fortunately, you don’t need to start from scratch when hiring people who have chosen to change career paths. Instead, focus on attracting candidates who have strong transferable skills across industries.
Transferable skills, also known as “portable skills,” are those that can carry from one job to another. Transferable skills can be used to position your past experience when applying for a new job—especially if it’s in a different industry. (Source: Indeed)
Because many transferable skills are soft skills, candidates from other industries are often highly collaborative and integrate well into new roles. In particular, they’re well-rounded and more productive from the beginning. As a result, your training time can be focused on knowledge specific to your organisation and the role.
Consider looking for these common transferable skills when expanding your talent pool beyond your industry:
Problem-Solving
Workers who can demonstrate strong problem-solving skills in their previous roles will likely be able to apply that same mentality on the job at your organisation. Specifically, employees with problem-solving skills will be able to identify issues, find out what is causing them and seek out potential solutions—without you having to nudge them.
Teamwork
If the role you’re hiring for requires a lot of collaboration between team members, look for candidates who have experience working toward a common goal with others. Teamwork also encompasses several other skills, such as empathy, active listening and communication.
Communication
Communication is perhaps the most common transferable skill across all industries and job types, because it’s required in almost every role. Workers with effective communication skills are able to clearly share ideas and information both verbally and in writing; know when to ask questions; read body language; and communicate with others in a wide range of settings.
Leadership
Whilst leadership skills are especially vital for management positions and above, they’re important for people to possess at all levels of the organisation. That’s because leadership skills contribute to an employee’s ability to rise to a challenge, get a team on the same page, delegate when needed and see a project through to completion.
Adaptability
Workers who are adaptable and flexible are able to adjust as deadlines, teams or processes change. They can pivot and learn new skills when needed, whilst also maintaining a positive attitude and ensuring goals are still met.
Technology Literacy
If you don’t want to teach your next hire the basics, look for candidates who have experience working with common business tools and technologies that will easily integrate into your business function. Similarly, if your organisation is embracing more digital tools, it’s also important that your candidate is comfortable learning new technology and software to improve efficiency and evolve with your organisation.
Whilst the list above highlights some key transferable skills, there are numerous others that might fit into your organisation and the roles you’re looking to fill. Check out this list from FlexJobs for more.
Building a Reskilling Programme for Workers Changing Careers
Attracting and hiring candidates with transferable skills allows you to skip basic training on soft skills. However, because many of these hires will be coming from different industries, you’ll likely still need to provide an onboarding programme for the first 90 days that includes some reskilling training for non-transferable skills to help them adjust to the new role.
Plus, employees expect training to come from employers. According to McKinsey, skills training is the number-one choice of prospective employees when choosing what makes a great employer. Plus, 94% of employees said they would stay longer with a company that invested in their skills development.
But, what type of training will work for your organisation? Well, that depends on what types of roles you’re looking to fill. According to a report by CompTIA, candidates have different preferences regarding training methods based on the type of job they’re seeking.
Consider these three steps to help you build an effective reskilling programme:
1. Identify Skills Gaps
When hiring candidates from different industries, there’s no doubt that they’ll require some additional training to be able to be successful in the new role. So, identify what those key skills are so you can build your training around them lets you focus on skills unique to the job and your organisation.
2. Develop Specific Skills Trainings
Once you’ve identified the key areas that will need to be covered, develop trainings specific to those needs. These trainings should encompass a variety of reskilling methods to fit the individual needs of your new hires, including:
a. On-the-job training:Employees can take on small projects and learn from real-world experience.
b. Online learning: Virtual courses can be taken at any time and are a great way to speed up the learning process. They provide a lot of content in a digestible form that anyone can complete at their own pace.
c. Blended learning: Combine online courses with in-person training to maximise the benefits of both. Employees can engage with instructors in person and come equipped with knowledge and questions from online training.
d. Peer learning: Employees can learn from one another through collaboration and job shadowing. By observing what someone’s day looks like, employees get a good sense of what will be expected of them day-to-day.
3. Measure Success
Leverage surveys, discussions, post-training assessments and candid feedback from trainees regarding the value they found from the reskilling trainings. Do they feel like they’ve learned something new? Do they have the knowledge to put new skills to use? Are they implementing what they’ve learned on the job? Once you find out, reevaluate and improve your training programme regularly based on the strengths and weaknesses that employees identify.
Marketing Your Reskilling Programme to Your Expanded Talent Pool
Now that you’ve assessed the transferable skills to watch for and developed a reskilling programme for workers who are changing careers, it’s important to make that programme known to potential candidates. Utilise recruitment marketing techniques on social media to promote your roles and share that your organisation is offering reskilling to employees from a variety of industries. In job ads, highlight the fact that hires will be provided with reskilling training to ensure they’re successful in their new role. This—in conjunction with a strong employment offer and benefits—will help your business stand out above others in the competitive search for top talent.
How do you persuade valued, highly sought-after professionals to move jobs in this market? By providing an opportunity to engage with the employer and understand the work and culture – before applying.
The Chemicals Regulation Division (CRD) of the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) is regulatory science at its best. Work here is forward-thinking, strategic and connected to decisions made by both Central Government and large-scale business.
SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS
SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED AWARENESS OF HSE AND THIS NICHE DIVISION WITHIN IT
55 QUESTIONS SUBMITTED FILLING THE CANDIDATES INFORMATION GAP
70% OF ATTENDEES MORE LIKELY TO APPLY SINCE THE WEBINAR
SCOPE AND SCALE
In undergoing significant change, our client was evolving and working hard to meet the challenges ahead. This required the recruitment of a significant number of Scientists to help ensure the safe and sustainable use of chemicals. This is science with a scale, scope and influence few organisations can match.
SITUATION
The vacancies were based in Bootle and York and market mapping was undertaken into the number of suitable candidates with the relevant skills and qualifications for these roles. This highlighted the scarcity of candidates available. In addition, there was the challenge of how to engage with the target audience and give them the insight and opportunity to better understand the organisation, the vital work they undertake and the opportunities for career development. A recent national study found the number one question from candidates was “What’s it like to work there?”
SOLUTION
With this in mind, we devised and developed a webinar to introduce the work of the CRD. The webinar featured a panel of existing employees, giving the participants an opportunity to hear first-hand what the job would entail. Alongside this we offered a live Q&A so that each person could ask questions. The webinar brought the organisation to life and painted a picture of what it would be like to work there.
RESULTS
The webinar significantly increased awareness of HSE and the niche division within it. The attendees were able to view the webinar remotely and on-demand. During the Q and A, 55 questions were submitted. These filled the candidates information gap and gave them insight as to how they would fit in. 70% of attendees said they are more likely to apply since attending the webinar.
Sainsbury’s: Transforming a Traditional Retail Role with Recruitment Marketing
As customer experience becomes the battleground for retail differentiation, Sainsbury’s turned to PeopleScout to help them hire the next generation of store managers.
19,000Applications Received in First 12 Weeks
Beating our Target by 171%
4,500Hires Made
Exceeding the Target of 2,400
1MCandidate Engagements
as Part of the Campaign
Shopping habits have changed. And in the highly competitive UK retail sector, customer experience can make or break results for retailers. To capitalise on this, Sainsbury’s, one the UK’s big five supermarkets, decided to transform one of its traditional roles—and reimagine store management in the process.
Their goal? To create a simpler, more rewarding experience for staff and customers alike. Sainsbury’s wanted to replace the traditional role of retail store manager with a new role, Customer & Trading Manager.
This new role gave managers the freedom to get out of the weeds and really lead teams—creating a new era of retail management. This required new skills and a different mindset. Some of their retail professionals would be able to transition into these new roles but some wouldn’t have what it takes. So Sainsbury’s turned to PeopleScout to help them attract new talent from the outside.
Turning Negatives into Positives
From the start, we faced some significant challenges:
The role was entirely new to the market, so we had to explain the new, unfamiliar employment proposition clearly to audiences both inside and outside of retail.
The role of retail manager had an image problem. It was seen as a transactional role that often saw you stuck on the registers.
The media was confusing the issue. We needed to counteract several misleading, negative reports of large-scale retail redundancies.
Sainsbury’s considered this to be one of their biggest recruitment challenges. They asked us to challenge and overturn negative public perceptions of retail management, introduce an entirely new type of role and hire 2,400 managers, from 24,000 applicants—in just six months.
The Core Message
First, we took apart the job profile to challenge the requirements. It was clear that the single most motivating benefit of the role was the potential to be a leader and to get the very best from a team. This suggested that the best candidates for this new type of retail role didn’t necessarily need retail experience.
We wanted to reconnect people with the emotional core of what’s great about management. It meant presenting the role—and Sainsbury’s—in a new light. So, we stripped away the language associated with the day-to-day tasks and instead put the focus back on employees as people.
We developed an overarching campaign message, Leading Starts Here, to clearly state our employment offer.
And to bring it to life, we used the following concept as our organizing thought: We all need someone to inspire us.
This universal, relatable truth was what used to capture the moving stories of individuals who have overcome huge obstacles—everything from low self-esteem to disability—with the help of inspirational leaders.
Making it Authenitic
Video was our chosen vehicle. Our diverse cast reflected Sainsbury’s approach as an inclusive employer and included people from a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds, people with common mental health issues and people with disabilities. While some of the responses were scripted, the strongest were spontaneous reactions to the simple prompt, tell me about someone who inspired you.
The campaign featured a blended approach of active and passive channels on- and offline:
Active channels included Indeed and a wide variety of other job boards as well as Google Search and Google Display Network.
Passive channels included billboards in key locations near major offices, newspapers, social media and other online destinations.
We used geo-location and behavioural targeting on search and social media to put our videos in front of audiences across the hospitality, travel, cabin crew, leisure and care industries.
We created 69 individual pieces of artwork, a campaign landing page with the hero video and an in-store toolkit, which included pull-up banners, poaching cards, posters, leaflets and stickers —everything a store needed to amplify the campaign.
The Results
Less than 10:1 application-to-hire ratio of high quality candidates.
Over 19,000 applications received in first 12 weeks (beating our target by 171%).
4,500 hires made, exceeding the target of 2,400.
69 content pieces produced.
£71 attraction-cost-per-hire achieved.
Close to 1 MILLION people engaged with the brand as part of the campaign.
After 12 weeks, the campaign had generated 376,986 clicks across online paid media. This has been achieved at an average cost per click of just £0.59.
The core film has been played 462,168 times and counting, receiving extremely positive feedback, praising its inclusive message.
AT A GLANCE
COMPANY Sainsbury’s
PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS Talent Advisory
LOCATIONS 600+ supermarkets across the UK
About Sainsbury’s Sainsbury’s in the second largest supermarket chain in the UK. Their focus is to bring high quality food and household goods to consumers in-store and online, supported by their brands, Argos, Habitat, Tu, Nectar and Sainsbury’s Bank.
Vodafone: Overcoming a Powerful Consumer Brand in Early Careers Recruitment
To overcome misperceptions about their mission, Vodafone engaged PeopleScout for employer branding and a recruitment marketing campaign to support its early careers recruitment programme.
16,000Applications Received, Beating our Target by 60%
23%Increase in the Numbers of Female Candidates
27Places Jumped on the Times Top 100 Rankings
Counterintuitive as it sounds, strong consumer brands can hinder recruitment. Applicants can get an idea of what to expect that doesn’t match the reality of the careers experience being offered. This was the case with Vodafone. For consumers, the organisation is a high-profile mobile phone retailer. But, behind that perception sits a multifaceted tech innovator with a mission to make the future world a better place.
In order to achieve this, Vodafone turned to PeopleScout to help it become a youth employer of choice, because changing the future meant gaining the buy-in of those who would be influential within it for years to come.
RESEARCH
As part of our research phase, we took a deep dive into Vodafone’s future jobs strategy. The client wanted to overcome high levels of youth unemployment by providing up to 100,000 young people with a digital workplace experience at Vodafone. Plus, given that one-in-five young people say they feel under-prepared for the digital economy, the business set another ambitious goal to support 10 million young people with access to digital skills, learning and employment opportunities.
So, how could Vodafone attract Millennials, Gen Z and beyond? These generations are big achievers whose ambitions soar higher than working in mobile phone retail. We needed an attraction strategy and recruitment marketing campaign that changed their audience’s perceptions about Vodafone and all the different kinds of careers—and impacts—they could make there.
THE BRIEF
Vodafone asked us to create a campaign that would spark conversations and stand out as part of their instantly recognisable brand. They needed to generate 10,000 applications to fill 150 graduate roles and 100 intern/industrial student placements across the business. Plus, the overarching goal was to change misperceptions of Vodafone, showing it as a major tech company, not a retailer, and build its reputation as a youth employer of choice. Importantly, we were asked to reach a more diverse audience and increase female applications.
AUDIENCE INSIGHTS
Of our target audience, 90.4% regularly used social media. On top of this, 91% of all social media users access channels via mobile. So, we developed a mobile-first, social media friendly campaign. Further research revealed that many students with the right background and personal qualifications were put off from applying due to a lack of confidence. So, we needed a message that was bold, relatable and empowering.
Just as important as the audience insights were the strategic considerations. Candidates are also customers. When buying products, they expect a streamlined, user-friendly, friction-free process, and they had the same expectation when making career decisions. So, we made every touchpoint (especially the application) as slick and easy as possible.
No contemporary attraction approach can be just about advertising. Long-term connections are far more powerful. So, central to our strategy was to set Vodafone up to engage in conversations and initiatives with high-potential university students throughout their full university lifecycle. In short, the strategy was to start on day one, not year three.
THE CORE MESSAGE
Our message, #GenerationPossible, aimed to capture the spirit of change and possibility and draw on the opportunity young people have to make an impact on the world for the better. Our visual approach used photography that reflected our target audience combined with bold headline statements.
Social media and career site content featured current grads and interns sharing their advice for the next generation of Vodafone employees, with a #GenerationPossible video at the heart of this campaign. Our six-month social media strategy for mobile consisted of 104 social posts with 20 mini-videos/GIFs. We posted, tracked and analysed this content on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Get to Know Us Videos
Our research had identified that our target audience felt like they weren’t good enough or lacked the skills to take on these roles. So, we created a series of videos featuring current Vodafone graduate recruits and interns. Filmed in and around Vodafone’s main campus, these videos gave real-life insights into what they could expect when it came to work, wellbeing, social responsibility, innovation, the assessment centre and the interview process.
Away from social media, we built a series of 41 on-campus events to connect students directly with Vodafone employees. We carefully chose our campuses based on those with the highest female-to-male ratios for tech degrees, as a way to help us drive up female applications.
THE RESULTS
The campaign comfortably exceeded Vodafone’s expectations.
We generated over 16,000 applications – beating our target by 60%.
We increased the number of female candidates by 23%.
We increased Instagram impressions by 89.3% (post-campaign vs. pre-campaign).
We saw 1.5 million Facebook impressions.
We gained 6.8 million impressions on organic posts on LinkedIn.
We created a hyper-targeted paid Facebook campaign which produced 390,510 impressions and 2,541 clicks – all from the target audience.
These numbers are backed up by audience sentiment. We improved Vodafone’s reputation as an employer significantly, jumping 27 places in the Times Top 100 rankings. As a result of its success, Vodafone asked us to develop the concept for their apprentice campaign audience and roll it out through a new assessment process design.
AT A GLANCE
COMPANY Vodafone
PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS Talent Advisory
About Vodafone Vodafone is a a British multinational telecommunications company. They provide connectivity and digital services for over 300 million people to work, learn, stay in touch with friends and family, access healthcare and more.
