NeonLogic For some, the first couple of weeks after the summer holidays might be a slow and relaxing return to work, with the most pressing task being to catch up on missed emails. But for many recruiters, the new year sees them re-energised and full of purpose, ready to roll up their sleeves and charge into one of their busiest annual projects: It’s grad season!
Nowadays things are just a little bit different. Businesses are retaining various social distancing protocols, as well as having continuity plans in place to mitigate the impacts of quick, short term lockdowns.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, graduate employers had to rapidly adapt their freshly launched campaigns and reimagine their tried and true recruitment processes to offer a virtual hiring experience. 2021 finds them more prepared, and the leading graduate employers know how vital it is to optimise their digital assets to recreate those lost in-person experiences.
Technology is one of the most important items in today’s talent acquisition toolkit to bridge both the physical and emotional distance that comes with virtual recruitment. Here at NeonLogic, we love working with clients on innovative digital solutions, helping recreate the dynamics of company culture and bringing your graduate offering to life online.
Here are three ways we’ve incorporated digital-savvy technology to ensure our clients’ graduate websites stand out from the rest:
1. Interactive Video Functionality
Graduate attraction at Auckland Council – It’s Personal
Today’s graduate cohort are digital natives, accustomed to a wealth of social media and technology at their fingertips, precisely customised to their preferences and interests. Employers who can demonstrate their ability to provide a personalised and bespoke candidate journey, tailored to an individual graduate’s needs, are already one step ahead.
Auckland Council is one such employer who we partner with annually to bring fresh, exciting graduate campaigns to market. Their ready adoption of highly personalised digital solutions strengthened their ability to manage the impacts of lockdown on their graduate intake. Following the award-winning success of our innovative video-lead career builder tool, the next step and evolution in their campaign website was the development of an interactive Q&A functionality, enabling graduates to engage with a video of an Auckland Council graduate, and select from a series of user-generated questions.
What began as a creative way to allow users to create a customised experience, became a vital piece of technology, allowing Auckland Council to continue interacting with graduates and demonstrating their employer offering, at a time when the recruitment team found themselves busily answering a higher volume of queries remotely, and managing candidates’ expectations through an unprecedented recruitment process.
Try the Q&A tool out for yourself!
2. 360-degree Video
Fletcher Building – Bringing your workspace to your candidates
When social distancing restrictions mean lost opportunities to interact with prospective graduates at on-campus meet and greets or in-person interviews, it’s vital to find ways to bridge the distance, retain engagement and make your employer brand sing. Nearly 75% of graduates report that they would renege on an accepted position in order to pursue a better offer elsewhere. Overwhelmingly the most popular reasons are for intangible perceptions such as ‘a more exciting role’ (38%) or ‘a more prestigious firm’ (21%), as compared to quantifiable metrics such as a bigger salary or better location.
If it wasn’t already apparent, this data supports how vital it is to your graduate campaign and recruitment processes to allow your company culture to shine. But how can you achieve that, when physical distancing and virtual interviewing risk losing that in-person rapport?
You might take a leaf out of Fletcher Building’s book. Tasked with attracting the best graduate talent for their key divisions, NeonLogic created a standalone graduate website, with leading edge 360 degree video technology providing graduates with the ability to ‘walk through’ Fletcher’s corporate head office as well as a construction site, providing candidates with real insight and understanding into what their experience as a Fletcher Building graduate might be.
Should further lockdowns or unforeseen events mean that prospective talent is unable to come to your offices, rich video means that you can still bring your workplace to them!
Take the virtual tour below.
3. Interactive Career Pathway Quiz
Deloitte – Don’t be afraid to make it fun
One graduate employer who knows the value of storytelling through a personalised experience is Deloitte. Partnering with NeonLogic to create an interactive career pathway, Deloitte’s graduate site is populated with video and written content, showcasing the diverse career journeys that past graduates have enjoyed within the business.
Newly launching to market this year is a quick fun quiz, which we’ve developed to help prospective graduates find their fit within Deloitte’s graduate program. Drawing upon the popularity of light-hearted questionnaires, the likes of which were used globally as boredom busters through periods of lockdown, graduates can answer a mixture of fun and sincere questions designed to allow them to showcase their personality as well as consider their working style and preferences, before being delivered the roles most suitable to them.
Curious to find your own fit? Take the quiz.
NeonLogic is lucky enough to have partnered with some of New Zealand and Australia’s leading graduate employers on strategic innovative marketing solutions, from microsites to creative media campaigns. Delivering both results and global awards and recognition, we understand the graduate market inside out – which was invaluable in 2020, when quickly adapting to the changing landscape created by COVID-19!
If you’re ready to develop a customised graduate marketing strategy, that will deliver results regardless of whether you’re in office or working from home, get in touch – we’d love to talk!
