Situation
When Elida Beauty, a personal care product manufacturing company, underwent a transformation including breaking away from their parent company, Unilever, they found themselves in need of a boost to support their industrial placement year roles across several UK locations.
Every year they bring in a number of industrial placements from various universities as part of their early careers program. These are students who spend a year learning “on the job” as part of their coursework. The Elida Beauty talent acquisition team had advertised for these opportunities, generating over 650 applications.
However, with this many applicants to whittle down to just 17 hires across 12 role types in marketing, finance, supply chain, sales, ecommerce and R&D, they turned to PeopleScout for support. We ot to work with our flexible recruiting service, Talent Campaign: Surge Support, part of PeopleScout Amplifiers™ suite.
Solution
The campaign was executed by a global team, led by a delivery director in our Krakow delivery center and supported by a team of senior recruiters in our global delivery center in Gurgaon, India.
To support the project, we stood up an ATS for the client and a bespoke landing page which provided candidates with more details about the roles, recruitment process and organization. Our recruiters handled all touchpoints, including:
- Reaching out to applicants to gauge continued interest and availability
- Executing a screening questionnaire to confirm eligibility and a screening exercise
- Conducting telephone interviews with competency-based questions
- Scheduling virtual interviews with hiring managers
- Supporting a group exercise activity for successful candidates for the final screening step
In just three weeks, we were reached out to and screened all applicants and scheduled interviews.
We also supported the offer process and regularly checked in with successful candidates to keep them warm prior to their start date. All candidate communications were captured via a workflow in the ATS which allowed us to provide the Elida Beauty team with reporting at each stage of the recruitment journey.
Results
Ultimately, in just three months, we connected with and screened over 650 applicants, conducting 170 telephone interviews. Hiring managers were presented with a quality pipeline of 80 candidates for virtual interviews. As a result, we achieved our target of 17 successful hires for Elida Beauty for this industrial placement cohort.
At a Glance
- COMPANY
Elida Beauty - INDUSTRY
Consumer Goods - PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
Amplifiers - ABOUT ELIDA BEAUTY
Elida Beauty was formed in 2021 and its original beauty and personal care brands included Q-tips®, Impulse, Caress, Tigi, Timotei, Monsavon, Brut, Moussel, Alberto Balsam, VO5 and more. In 2022, it became a formalised global business unit within Unilever Personal Care. It was announced in December 2023 that the Unilever group has concluded an agreement to sell its Elida Beauty business to Boston-based private equity firm Yellow Wood Partners and the transaction is due to be completed by mid-2024 following completion of customary closing and regulatory approvals.
More Early Careers Insights

Articles
Breaking Barriers: Social Mobility in Early Careers
In the United Kingdom, social mobility has gained more attention in recent years, particularly in relation to early career opportunities and their impact on an individual’s life trajectory. Social mobility refers to the movement of individuals or groups between different socio-economic positions within society—either upward (improving one’s social status) or downward. The impact that early…
Read the Article