Solution: Employer Brand

The AA: Ready for ANYTHING? An Experiential Event Drives More Applications

Posted on by skatz
The AA: Ready for ANYTHING? An Experiential Event Drives More Applications

Recruitment Events

The AA: Ready for ANYTHING? An Experiential Event Drives More Applications

The AA engaged PeopleScout to design and host big, bold recruiting events for their call center roles. Through a series of silly, messy tasks, we increased awareness of the AA’s roles and drove more applications.

2 recruitment events
60,000 career site visits
78 percent increase in applications

Thousands more careers site visitors. Hundreds more applications. And how did we do it? With 64 fake spiders, 15 liters of custard and one tube of wasabi paste—among other things. This is the story of how we created a fun, conversation-sparking event that captured the essence of the AA employer brand, raised awareness of their call center roles and helped them make the successful hires they needed.

Situation

The AA has two large call centers in Oldbury (near Birmingham) and Newcastle, England. With ambitious hiring targets to meet, they’d used a range of attraction methods, from job boards and paid social media, to taxi wraps and ads at cinemas. They weren’t getting the results they needed, so it was time for something bigger and bolder.

Solution

We discussed and planned the objectives carefully with the talent attraction team and local stakeholders. We wanted to raise general awareness of the organization in local audiences and encourage them to spread the word, so we needed a way of reaching a large number of individuals easily, effectively and creatively. The AA also wanted us to showcase their fun and friendly culture.

Highlights

  • Raising awareness of roles
  • Reflecting a fun and friendly culture
  • Boosting social media activity
  • Increasing careers site visitors
  • Record-breaking application figures

At a Glance

  • COMPANY: The AA
  • INDUSTRY: Roadside Recovery Services
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Talent Advisory
  • LOCATIONS: 2 call centers in England
  • ABOUT THE AA: The Automobile Association (The AA) has been supporting motorists in the United Kingdom since 1905. With over 14 million members, breakdown cover is always their number one priority, but the AA has branched out into finance, insurance, leisure and lifestyle services.
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A BRAND MESSAGING-ALIGNED EVENT

The “Ready for ANYTHING?” strapline is the central message in all of the AA’s recruitment communications activity, so it made sense to take this message and see just who was Ready for ANYTHING? among local audiences.

FUN TO TAKE PART IN. FUN TO WATCH.

With a big prize to incentivize contestants, the event was built around getting volunteers on stage to take part in a mystery challenge. We built The Random Challenge Generator—a big screen flashing through a series of silly, messy tasks. The contestant pushed a big yellow button to stop the screen, which brought up their challenge. We also engaged a celebrity host to help draw the crowds, engage with the audience and keep the fun moving. We ran two of these shopping center-based outdoor events—one in Newcastle, the other in Birmingham.

PROMOTING THE OPPORTUNITIES

Maximizing social media activity before, during and after the event, we also live-streamed the challenges. Filming on the day enabled us to create short videos for follow-up content to promote the AA’s call center roles. On the event days, we gave out flyers encouraging people to get involved and driving to the AA careers site, while digital screen and on-stage announcements also highlighted the AA’s local career opportunities.

Results

UNPRECEDENTED CAREERS SITE VISIT FIGURES

Social media and event build-up activity drove 60,000 career site visits across the weeks events were held. Before, 1,500 to 2,000 people visited the AA careers site each day. For the Newcastle event, this increased to 5,000 in just one day, with a record high of 7,100 in one day for Birmingham.

RECORD NUMBERS OF APPLICATIONS

While the AA saw a huge increase in applications for their call center in Oldbury, they had record breaking figures for Newcastle. With a month-over-month increase from 576 to 1,026—a 78% increase!

Surrey Police: A Video Call to Action for Detective Constables

Posted on by akessler
Surrey Police: A Video Call to Action for Detective Constables

Recruitment Video

Surrey Police: A Video Call to Action for Detective Constables

PeopleScout created a compelling call to action to attract Detective Constables for Surrey Police with documentary-style video.

Situation

With Surrey bordering the Greater London area, Surrey Police are often in the shadow of The Metropolitan Police in the capital. There’s a perception that only detectives serving in the big city get the chance to work on big cases and solve serious crimes, and that Surrey is quiet and boring. The truth is that Surrey offers that opportunity, plus the training, career progression and work-life balance detectives looking for.

It’s complex. It’s challenging. And it’s rewarding.

Surrey Police needed to recruit experienced Detective Constables from other forces. They engaged PeopleScout and our industry-leading in-house creative team to challenge perceptions about crime fighting in Surrey.

Solution

Surrey Police asked us to create a video that would show experienced Detective Constables from other forces that they could have the career and development they wanted while reassuring the public that Surrey is a safe place to live.

A Research-Based Proposition

Conducting research to understand why detectives worked for Surrey Police, we developed the underlying proposition, “Be the detective you have always wanted to be.”

Compelling Visual Approach

We wanted something that would stand out and resonate with our target audience, inspiring them to uncover the truth in Surrey. So, adopting a compelling TV documentary trailer style, we worked with the filmmaker behind the groundbreaking BBC2 series The Detectives to shoot it—making the result truly cinematic.

Authentic Content

It was crucial to involve real detectives in the video, and at every stage, we worked with the detective team to ensure our film was as close to reality as possible. By conducting audio interviews with the detectives, we were able to match powerful, authentic, statements with the visuals.

Results

The video and accompanying campaign were highly successful in attracting Detective Constables to the Surrey Police.

Significant Increase in Hires

Surrey Police hadn’t expected the campaign to be so successful—they thought a handful of people might apply. But, with 24 hires in 9 months (up from 5 hires in 13 months), the results have really impressed them.

Cost Effective Campaign

With the typical cost to train a new starter as much as £100,000, this campaign built around attracting experienced detectives proved dramatically cost effective at £1,250 per hire.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY: Surrey Police
  • INDUSTRY: Government & Public Sector
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Talent Advisory
  • ABOUT SURREY POLICE: Surrey Police fights crime and protects communities in the country of Surrey, the third most densely populated county in SE England.
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Sellafield: Transforming an Employer Brand to Engage Emerging Talent

Posted on by akessler
Sellafield: Transforming an Employer Brand to Engage Emerging Talent

Sellafield: Transforming an Employer Brand to Engage Emerging Talent

PeopleScout’s Talent Advisory revamped Sellafield Ltd’s employer brand for early careers talent.

Situation

As part of an ongoing transformational journey, Sellafield Ltd had redefined its values and strategy for the future. In response to this, they also needed to expand their schemes to attract and hire more graduates and placement students than ever before. They engaged PeopleScout to develop a new employer brand and visual identity that told their story across a range of channels—one that significantly increased applications.

Sellafield needed to hire 55 graduates and 50 students for placement. They were keen to reimagine their employer brand to reflect the opportunities that their organizational changes would bring.

Solution

The client agreed with us that a relaunch of the graduate and industrial placement schemes was required, to tell the story of their transformation and engage candidates across the breadth of disciplines.

We worked with Sellafield to develop an engaging employer value proposition (EVP). Using the EVP as a platform, our employer brand messaging and design conveyed the new vision and strategy, and what that meant for our target audiences, across a range of attraction materials.

This included careers fair materials, such as stands, leaflets and posters, and collateral for their online attraction strategy—social media, search engine pay-per-click ads and digital content for their careers website. We also supported our client with their approach to media channels and advertising on relevant job boards.

Results

The new Sellafield EVP has had just under 1 million views across all channels. With almost 30,000 people clicking to their careers website from social media, Sellafield now has a higher number of visitors to their website—up 8% from the previous year. And, with around 1,500 applications, they’ve gained greater interest across all disciplines.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY: Sellafield Ltd
  • INDUSTRY: Industrial
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Recruitment Process Outsourcing
  • ANNUAL HIRES: 55 graduates and 50 students
  • ABOUT SELLAFIELD LTD: A pioneer for the UK’s nuclear industry, Sellafield Ltd is a global center for nuclear engineering management. They set international standards in high-hazard reduction as they work to create a clean and safe environment for future generations.
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Bombardier: Moving the World’s Engineering Talent with a Global Employer Brand

Posted on by akessler
Bombardier: Moving the World's Engineering Talent with a Global Employer Brand

Bombardier: Moving the World’s Engineering Talent with a Global Employer Brand

PeopleScout helped Bombardier Transportation with a global employer brand and toolkit to help them recruit hard-to-fill roles and meet diversity objectives.

Situation

A worldwide leader in rail technology, Bombardier Transportation had no global employer brand presence. They approached PeopleScout and our in-house creative to develop a employer value proposition (EVP), not only to be used to push out the overall brand message, but also to underpin specific propositions for, and support recruitment activity in, each of their territories around the world. Launched initially in the UK, and now rolling out to other territories,

The new employer brand needed to tackle a negative market misperceptions of redundancies and lost orders. The truth was that they had a full order book and some new and exciting contracts to deliver in the future. With this positive story to share, they realized they had a great opportunity to enhance their position within the market.

Solution

Research & Discovery

We began with extensive research in all key Bombardier Transportation global territories. We conducted interviews with a mixture of senior stakeholders and employees from the main talent groups they needed to recruit from and also carried out external sessions with relevant talent groups.

Foundation & Framework

Using the insights we’d gained, we developed a set of EVP pillars capturing the key themes from the research. This provided the framework for creating our global messaging platform and design.

Guidelines & Toolkit

Working closely with Bombardier Transportation’s Branding and Communications teams, we produced a set of guidelines and a toolkit of materials that could be used globally and tweaked for each individual territory.

Results

Initially launched within the UK, the EVP was rolled out to other territories around the world.

Bombardier Transportation launched its first-ever media campaign using the EVP, using a combination of digital and outdoor media in key hiring locations in the UK. Across the whole campaign, they received over 500 applications and made hires into critical roles that they had struggled to recruit for previously. They were also able to recruit several women into these positions addressing their global diversity objectives.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY: Bombardier Transportation
  • INDUSTRY: Manufacturing
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Talent Advisory
  • ABOUT BOMBARDIER: Bombardier Transportation is a global leader in rail technology, with headquarters in Berlin, Germany. They specialize in rail vehicle and equipment manufacturing and servicing.
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