Early Talent Attraction and RecruitmentBuilding a ‘best in class’ approach which uses the best of digital

The Early Talent Landscape ...................................................................................................p3

The Graduate Market ................................................................................................................p4

Campus Ambassadors ....................................................................................................................................................... p5

Managed Society Sponsorship .................................................................................................................................. p6

Managed Virtual Events ...................................................................................................................................................... p7

The Apprentice Market .............................................................................................................p8

Virtual or Blended School / College Workshops, and Open Days ...................................... p9

Work Experience ........................................................................................................................................................................... p10

Building Early Talent communities to maximise your ROI .....................................p11

Contents

With all recruiters pivoting to digital for their attraction, how will you stand out from the crowd? It’s going to be digitally very noisy, so how will you get the talent you want to engage with your digital activities and content? Using previous content and simply rolling it out as virtual events will not cut it; your target audience will quickly tune out.

How you re-shape what you deliver is what will make the difference, as well as the tech platform you use.

Educational institutions are finding ways to adjust to a more digital world, with this in mind, what elements of your previous attraction strategy do you need to both update & deliver differently

for what is likely to be a, fully or in part, virtual academic year?

Getting your digital attraction strategy right will ensure the most relevant and diverse candidates don’t just engage with your brand but then apply (and submit a strong application)

Below, we outline some of the key tools and interventions you may have used before, and how you can both pre-purpose and leverage them in a virtual world.

We’ll also illustrate how to maximise your ROI by building your own engaged, talent community (talent pooling).

The Early Talent Landscape

With all recruiters pivoting to digital for their attraction, how will you stand out from the crowd? It’s going to be digitally very noisy, so how will you get the talent you want to engage with your digital activities and content?

With many universities delivering most of their teaching online, what elements of your previous attraction strategy do you need to update for this virtual academic year?

Getting your digital attraction strategy right will ensure the most relevant and diverse candidates don’t just engage with your brand but then apply.

Below, we outline some of the key tools and interventions you may have used before, and how you can leverage them in a virtual world. We’ll also illustrate how to maximise your ROI by building your own engaged, talent community.

THE GRADUATE MARKET

Campus ambassadors have always allowed you as an employer to have a presence on the ground, and this academic year, when you can’t be there in person, they will be even more important. How each University responds to Covid-19 is different, so they will be your eyes and ears, providing insight and helping you shape and evolve your attraction activities for each uni. While at the same time, they will continue as before to:

Connect with relevant student societies to promote your brand.

Manage focus groups

Collect student data

Be more cost-effective than the significant costs you incur being on campus, which is likely not permissible for some or, all of, the coming year.

So, if you re-purpose some of your traditional graduate attraction budget from careers fairs and on campus events, and channel that toward funding campus ambassadors, you can safely and effectively get your strategy off the ground.

To keep it simple when you need to pivot quickly, we at MKF can handle the process for you. We’re experts at recruiting, managing, training, supporting and organising a host of award-winning campus ambassadors each year.

Campus Ambassadors

Our ImpactAs seen by one of our employer partners

35 Campus Ambassadors last academic year

Impact delivered across 30 universities

Over 750 newsletter sign ups

Over 20 competitor reports completed by Campus Ambassadors

Ambassadors specific to degree subjects

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As students will either be studying from home, or only coming onto campus part-time with social distancing, there needs to be a new way to connect directly with students.

Student societies hold the answer. Your previous experience of society sponsorships may or may not have been as impactful as you would have liked, however, with our 15 years’ experience in maximising student society performance, we can help you adopt this strategy by:

Working with you to agree KPIs, such as target emails, virtual events, data collection etc, and then manage the delivery from societies.

Both train and, importantly, proactively support them to achieve their KPIs, as well as manage the payment of the sponsorship money so the committee can receive it quickly, whether in one payment or in stages (based on performance).

Managed society sponsorship

Our ImpactAs seen by one of our employer partners

12 society managed events across Autumn and Spring 2019/20

1,273 student data shared with client

51% of event attendees were Female

62% of event attendees were from a BAME background

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How will you design & deliver these much needed new virtual events in a way that ensures yours stand out and thus drive both registrations and engagement at the event?

Key to success with these new style events will be:

Great Content – short, sharp content maximises engagement. The ability to interact makes a real difference and how you design your content is critical. Don’t make the mistake of simply taking what you did face to face and doing the same digitally!

Effective promotion - We offer focused and consistent promotion, leveraging our multiple networks - including careers services, relevant student societies and academic contacts, along with social media. Promotion of virtual events will increase with Campus Ambassadors, as they

will be your ‘on the ground’ voice. A joined-up attraction strategy with MKF, including virtual events and ambassadors or society sponsorship will result in a wider student reach.

We utilise the data from event sign ups to capture key information, enabling a targeted follow up with interested attendees.

Whether we re-purpose your face to face content, or create new digital content, we can also co-deliver that content to ensure it’s impactful and engaging by using our tutor network (all trained actors).

Managed virtual events

Our ImpactAs seen by one of our employer partners

22 events delivered this/last academic year

1,200 number of students attended, with c1,900 sign ups

91% of attendees were more likely to consider this MKF client as an employer of choice post-graduation

“Usually when speaking to representatives from companies about what it’s like to work there I don’t feel as though my question’s been fully answered but the representatives today gave a very honest description. They gave us very useful tips for the application process and were friendly and approachable.”

www.mykindafuture.com

With recruiters pivoting to digital for their attraction, how will you stand out from the crowd? Attraction activities will be digitally very noisy, so how will you get the talent you want to engage with your digital activities and content?

Schools and colleges are seeking to adjust to a more digital world, with this in mind, what elements of your previous attraction strategy do you need to update for this virtual academic year?

Getting your digital attraction strategy right will ensure the most relevant and diverse candidates don’t just engage with your brand, but then apply for roles.

We have outlined below some of the key tools and interventions you may have used before, and how you can now leverage them in a virtual world. We will also illustrate how to maximise your ROI by building your own engaged talent community (talent pooling).

THE APPRENTICE MARKET

How will you design and deliver these new, virtual events in a way that ensures your workshops stand out, resulting in increased registrations and engagement? The key to success with these new events include:

Great content – short, sharp content maximises engagement. The ability to interact makes a real difference, and how you design your content is critical. Don’t make the mistake of simply taking what you did face-to-face, and delivering the same digitally!

Effective and targeted promotion - We offer focused and consistent promotion, leveraging our long and existing relationships with schools & colleges (we have data on every school & college in the UK to enable us to target for you)

Here are two proven ways to drive engagement:

1. ‘Teacher Recommendations’ – where the established relationships we at MKF have with teachers means they will take the information

we provide them with to identify & recommend the most suitable students to attend your events.

2. All students will be made aware of the event, through emails and social media, so no-one is missed, and they can sign up directly.

We utilise the data from event sign-ups to enable a targeted follow up with interested attendees.

Event Delivery - Whether we re-purpose your face-to-face content, or create new digital content, we can also co-deliver that content with you to ensure it’s impactful and engaging by using our tutor network (who are all trained actors, so great at being engaging)

Virtual or Blended School / College Workshops, and Open Days

Our ImpactAs seen by one of our employer partners

We ran a school workshops campaign in Summer 2019 for Halfords, where we leveraged our teacher relationships to increase female participants. The campaign reached 1000 Year 10 students and 51% of attendees were female. The content was designed to give students the chance to interact with Halfords employees and develop workplace skills that Halford’s employees use every day. Students cited “Learning about various roles in a business

environment”, “Creating our own campaign” and “The interactions between the tutors and the students” as their favourite elements of the session. 71% of students were more likely to consider a role in the industry following the session, with teachers praising the delivery; “The sessions were really well delivered, and the presenters were engaging, informative and clearly passionate about the company and their work”.

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It gives the student the opportunity to learn:

more about your industry

the highly credible career routes apprenticeships offer

Information about the roles you offer

With work experience becoming more strategic, there are some critical elements to an effective work experience programme:

targeting the right profile of students

having a robust and fair application & selection process

preparing the students for their time with you

delivering an effective and engaging experience

the right follow-up and ongoing engagement

maintain the focus of the most engaged talent who will then go onto apply, and secure, an apprenticeship with you

Here at MKF, we have strong relationships with schools and colleges, critical trusted relationships with teachers, the capability and experience to shape great work experience, and the technology to support the journey.

In recent months, we have successfully pivoted these opportunities to include virtual work experience opportunities.

When you need to adapt quickly, we can handle the process for you.

www.mykindafuture.com

Work experience for the last few years has increasingly become an important pipeline for apprentice recruitment, similar to internships acting as a feeder for for graduate recruitment over the last 5-7 years.

Work Experience (face-to-face or virtual)

Our ImpactAs seen by one of our employer partners

We have been running a Year 12 work experience programme for TATA Consultancy Services (TCS) for 4 years. In its 5th year, we have taken the offer digital through our online learning platform Connectr. Through a series of pre-boarding online learning modules, we have prepped students for the week and monitored this activity to gauge how likely students are to show up for day 1 of the programme. We have utilised our teacher network to ensure that the target students are taking part. In the IT and digital industry, it can be difficult to engage young women; we have engaged over 50% female participants. Taking the programme digital means that we have not been restricted by location.

We have been able to sign up students from all over the UK, prioritising students living in UK cold spots.

For another one of our employer partners, MyKindaFuture are managing the outreach and onboarding process for their work experience programme, with an initial target of circa 200 participating students, increasing to circa 250. Students are recommended by their teachers, apply via Connectr and are then shortlisted for the opportunity. Despite setbacks related to the Covid crisis and pivoting the digital offer, we are still on course to hit targets!

Building Early Talent communities to maximise your ROI – manage all this activity through one tech platform!

Research shows that one-off interventions have some, but limited, impact. To truly drive the ROI from your attraction strategy, you need to enable those you engage with digitally (from your social media to virtual events) to easily find out more. For maximum impact this needs to be done in a personalised & interactive way to help build a truly engaged community of candidates. We are experts in building diverse talent communities, leveraging our innovative engagement platform Connectr, to make this happen.

One of our clients invited all students they engaged with at events, fairs, insight/open days, and work experience to sign up to Connectr.

Within 3 weeks, 81% signed up and were engaging with the platform.

If you would like to find out how we can help you launch a new type of Early Talent Attraction and Engagement strategy for 2020/21, that delivers real and lasting value – then get in touch!

Simon Reichwald Strategic Lead for Talent at MyKindaFuture Hon. Vice-President at Institute of Student Employers (ISE) Simon@mykindafuture.com