graduate marketing

10 steps to becoming a more attractive graduate employer

Reputation is a funny old thing. By definition it’s a widespread belief that someone or something has a particular characteristic – something that makes it unique.

In today’s employer marketing arena, being unique is a commodity that many simply don’t have. When it comes to standing out from the crowd, being heard and generating real space between you and the competition, many employers think they’re #winning, but in reality they’re out there sounding and acting just like everyone else.

There’s a Dutch photographer called Hans Eijkelboom. He’s created a collection of ‘anti-sartorial’ photographs entitled, ‘People of the 21^st Century.’ He walked round town with a camera round his neck and the trigger in his pocket, snapping people while they were unaware. Sounds a little stalkerish but the way he arranged these photo’s is what we’re focusing on here.

In a world where we all think we’re individuals choosing to look, dress and act in a way that reflects our personality and celebrates our individuality, it’s remarkable just how identical we all actually look.

Have a quick look here to see what we mean.

So where are we going with this?

How can you grab someone’s attention, and keep it, when you’re only as appealing as the next employer down the road? How do you really take that step from aspiring to be different, to truly leading the pack and setting a great example? How do you become the envy of the competition?

In the coming weeks we’ll be sharing 10 pieces of content with you, the graduate recruiter, as you begin to assess your recent performance, define goals and objectives and plan for the year ahead.

Our aim is to make your life easier, so we’ll be sharing success stories, examples of client work and the results achieved, as well as some of the latest thinking that will help you to effectively manage your reputation, persuade and influence your audience and build those all important conversations on and offline.

Follow us on Twitter, Linked In or Google + to stay up to date, or follow our blog using the follow button to the top right of this post to receive an email each week when new content drops.

Of course, if there’s any topics you’re particularly interested in then be sure let us know, and we’ll even create your own personal bit of content around that topic and share it with our wider community to fire up a discussion and get our readers input.

See you next week and have a fabulous weekend!

The team at Tonic

http://www.tonic-agency.com

Everyone’s in the game!

“Diversity is a reality, inclusion is a choice.”

KPMG were keen to promote inclusiveness on campus, and our crowd game helped them to do just that. We invited students who didn’t know each other to step up and take part in a fun and engaging game. The goal was to control a virtual hot air balloon on screen by using your body. Waving your arms left and right would move the balloon in the respective direction on screen. The idea was to get from start to finish as quickly as possible and clinch 1st spot on the leader board.

However, there’s a couple of twists. Firstly, you’d need to avoid the flocks of geese, lightning bolts, UFO’s and oncoming airplanes that try to pop, zap and shred you on your way to the finish line.

Secondly, students would need to work together to ensure that teams of up to 15 players were all moving together as one. Find out more by watching the video here.

Codehunter – helping BNP Paribas to attract tech savvy graduates

Many hidden secrets are tucked away on the internet, things that make you smile, placed there by mischievous programmers and developers. They’re known as Easter eggs, ‘in’ jokes put there by clever coders who make it their mission to add a little extra sparkle to the work they do. Exactly the kind of crowd BNP Paribas was looking to target.

CodeHunter played to that curious part of the developer personality. We began by creating four Easter eggs of our own. Then we buried them away on the BNP Paribas graduate website.

The challenge for students was to uncover them and the hidden gems of code they contained.

Once students had collected all four lines of code they entered them on a competition webpage and were then given access to the final stage of the competition. If players thought it had been tough so far, that was nothing compared to what awaited them now.

Having begun with a challenge designed to appeal to particular personality types, this was now a test of the technical ability BNP Paribas was looking for in potential candidates and designed to act as a serious filter, leaving only the brightest of the bright still in the game. The challenge was to unscramble an image by using integer maths.

If players managed to unscramble the image, they had to provide a description of it and, as is the case in pretty much every maths test, they had to show the workings they had used.

The prize? A guaranteed interview with one of the banking world’s most innovative technology teams.

The results?

248 players in just over two weeks, from two campuses and double the amount of applications for live Technology roles.

Snap it, Scan it, Win it! Our latest work for Tesco Graduates!

Snap it, scan it win!

SO WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

Tesco is the proverbial supermarket giant and has used many of the more mainstream channels to amass an army of student followers over the years.
When they approached us at the end of 2013, it was with a clear brief to raise their profile on campus and change some of the entrenched perceptions of them that are still held by many people.
We set out to create an experience that would yield high engagement, one that would be innovative and, ultimately, one that would create a talking point, getting people chatting about a different Tesco, in a different way. Working together we explored some relatively new channels before developing a first-of-a-kind game that uses the Snapchat app.

Snapchat is a mobile-only app that has caught fire with teenagers. If you haven’t heard of it, here’s how it works: with the app loaded on your phone you take a photo, set a timer for anything from 1 to 10 seconds, then send it to your friend. Your friend gets the photo on his/her phone and from the moment they open the image they only have the time you set to view it before ‘poof!’ it self-destructs. We exploited that function to give people the opportunity to win prizes in an immersive, quick-fire game.

We built a stand containing 12 Perspex boxes, each with a barcode scanner attached to it. Inside each box were a number of mystery prizes but every box was locked. Students could only unlock a box by scanning it with the correct ‘key’. The keys were, in fact, 12 unique barcodes and to get hold of one students first had to send in a ‘selfie’ to the Tesco Snapchat team. Once they had done this the students were sent their’key’but they had no idea what box it would open. They also knew that they couldn’t open their key until they were ready to play, otherwise it would self-destruct after 10 seconds.
Students queued up to play and once on the stand a series of fast and frenzied 10-second periods passed in the blink of an eye as each student raced to scan as many boxes as possible, hoping to find a match.
Feedback at the events was fantastic with students saying,

“That’s such a cool idea” and “That’s so neat that they’re using Snapchat!”
And more than one student who was about to play the game was heard to say…

“Oh my God! I can’t believe I’m so nervous.”

Do Graduate Recruiters need to re-think where the people they’re looking for might be found?

Do Graduate Recruiters need to re-think where the people they’re looking for might be found?

Welcome back to our 5-part blog about the factors that are leading to a need for change in the way graduate recruiters choose to engage with future talent. Last week we covered why it’s much harder to get the attention of candidates today than in years gone by.

This week, we’ll explore where those candidates are found, and the changes in play that might mean you’re spending more time and money on your efforts, however could still be looking in the wrong places.

Why? Well we know that changes to Higher Education funding mean many students now prioritise factors such as location over reputation. And the sad truth is, some of the best and brightest simply can’t afford to fund themselves through university at all. Which means that, today, the talent employers typically target is increasingly found in less typical places. However, some Graduate Recruiters persist in visiting the same universities over and over again regardless of whether they’re getting results, either because they’re asked to, or simply because that’s where they’ve always had strong relationships.

Without wishing to cause offense, is that really the most intelligent approach? What did Albert Einstein once say….?

So where do you begin?

Tools such as HighFliers and Trendence are great for getting a detailed understanding of where the communities you need to be part of can be found, and provide a good temperature check for the sentiment around your brand on specific campuses.

But is this the right approach to take in today’s social, mobile and connected world? And, what’s the Milkround actually for, if not just a vanity parade?

The whole concept of targeting ‘audience groups’ with your messaging is based largely on an out-dated push marketing model. Research has shown that push marketing is less effective – there’s too much of it going on and we’re just not tuning in any more – even more so with millennials.

So how can we ensure that our messages reach the right people and are delivered in the right way?

Let’s take a moment to think about the modern graduate. How do they choose to consume media today compared to 5 years ago? What do they care about? How much time do they spend on their mobiles each day? Where do they spend time online, and why?

The answers to these questions will differ significantly from one person to the next, and it’s virtually impossible to cater for everyone’s needs on a one-to-one basis. But, it is possible to create a communications strategy that’s informed, human and leaves people wanting more.

In order to do that, you need to be personal and you need to market in the same way that your customers want to buy

Drawing people towards you is far more potent. It’s more challenging to get right, but when you do you’ll most certainly reap the benefits in today’s future talent market. It’s the right approach if you hope to gain the trust of even the most discerning young talent.

We’re not talking about people turning up at your front door of course. And we’re not suggesting you stop turning up on campuses. We’re talking about harnessing the power of communities and how you can position yourselves within these to begin delivering your message in the right way and becoming a source of value. It’s about finding the right blend of ‘pull’ as well as ‘push’. It’s about going where they are, not where you expect them to be.

If you’re successful in pulling people towards you, you’ll need to worry far less (and spend less) about what campuses you visit and what research you use to help you locate audience demographics.

Of course, to do this you’ll need great content and messages and we’ll talk about this in more detail next week.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to comment and click the follow button if you like what you’ve read. Feel free to pop over to http://www.tonic-agency.com in the meantime.

Why do graduate recruiters have to work much harder today to get the attention of candidates that used to be easy to hire?

A combination of business, communications, economic and social factors have come together to create an environment that makes your life as a graduate recruiter harder every year. As if it wasn’t hard enough, right?

These impact the role of a graduate recruiter – so much so that the job we all do now is significantly more complex, challenging and stressful than it used to be.

But, what are the changes? What can we do about it? How can we be more effective? All questions we’re going to be addressing in our next series of blogs. Starting here with a look at the shift in context that students and employers are working within. Firstly education.

Changes to Higher Education funding have influenced where people choose to go to university, meaning that the kind of talent employers usually look for is increasingly found in more unusual places.

There is also a larger proportion of students graduating now who aren’t considered employable by many businesses. To add to this, the marketplace is becoming more crowded and noisier as employers try harder than ever to get the attention of students from a younger age.

A new social network seems to pop up every month and conflicting stats around mobile can make you second-guess your efforts. And of course you have to bear in mind that the younger generations are becoming increasingly skeptical and are far less likely to give up their trust so easily.

Essentially, there’s a lot more to consider today than ever before. These factors are driving a high level of change in the way employers approach how they choose to communicate with the people their business needs. Or at least they should be.

When we look at the core principles of building and strengthening relationships with the people you need, we see that these can be broken down into basic elements:

· Where are they?

· What messages do they need to hear?

· How can I engage and support them?

· How can I dissuade the wrong and persuade the right people to apply through
conversation?

· How can we make the onboarding process as engaging and informative as
possible?

These are some of the questions we’ll be looking to answer in this blog. Along with… how can we deliver our message in a human and authentic way that reflects the candidate and her/his community? How can we create credible communications that transcend the functional elements of your brand and connect at a much deeper, emotional level? How can we pull the people we need to us, as opposed to pushing our messages onto them and hoping they’re heard?

We’ve had experience helping some of the world’s largest brands answer these – and it’s been an immense amount of fun helping them. We’ve created world-firsts and won awards for our clients along the way.

What we’ve discovered is that there’s no golden rule that will help to make you more attractive to graduates and school leavers overnight. However, there is a slight change in mind-set that you can apply to your communications strategy that will help you to become more social, mobile and personal, and ultimately help your business become more human, more valuable and more trusted – all of which pay a vital role when it comes to influencing sentiment around your brand.

In this blog, we’ll be taking a look at the change in thinking that’s required to help you position your brand as an attractive and valuable source within the communities you hope to attract talent from. We’ll break each section down, looking at what has been the more typical approach and compare that with the unorthodox thinking that’s necessary in today’s market.

We really hope you enjoy reading this, and we’d love to hear your comments and feedback. You’ll be able to find our details at www.tonic-agency.com