Creating An Engaging Volume Recruitment Process – The Coles Case Study

My head is still spinning from last month’s conference, the first time I ever attended this event! I feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to visit such a great country as Australia. Montage is humbled by the opportunities we have had in the region.  From the World Café roundtables, to the keynote speakers and breakout sessions, to everyone that I spoke to at the Montage booth, there was so much to soak in.
 

Adding Marketing To Your Recruitment Function

Montage blog
I knew that this year’s theme – Recruitment is Marketing – would be an important topic for the talent acquisition teams working hard every day to win the war for talent.  Reaching people is big business. A recent Bersin & Deloitte study noted that companies spend $72 billion each year on recruiting products and services, and the average spend per hire is now $3,300. Bringing in marketing fundamentals to your recruiting strategy can help your company stand out and extend your candidate reach. And, by adding new technology such as video interviewing to your hiring process, you can package and strengthen your employer brand, helping to attract the right candidates.
This was especially highlighted in our breakout session with Christine Conner, Head of Talent Acquisition for Coles. The session, Mad Men Recruitment: What Talent Management can Learn From the Golden Age of Advertising (you can see the presentation at the bottom of the page), featured Christine’s story of how Coles is using Montage video interviewing to attract the right candidates for a new store opening in Melbourne. Christine’s passion for the candidate experience shown through in everything she had to say.
ATC Contingent 2015 Banner

The Coles Case Study

Coles is in a unique position where truly, all their job candidates can also be customers. With more than 400,000 applications a year, but only 24,000 jobs to fill, the team thinks strategically about the candidate experience, especially for those who don’t receive a job offer. Regardless of the end result, it’s vital that the applicant feels they were taken seriously, or they could end up no longer being a customer.
Christine feels strongly, and I agree with her, that today’s candidate doesn’t want to apply for a job in a traditional manner. Top candidates don’t have time to come to a career fair or come to your store to fill out an application. But yet, our practices tend to reflect the very practices we know they don’t want to see.
 

The Brief

 
croppedimage1200800-Coles-Deli
 
Coles’ new concept store in Melbourne provided an opportunity to try something new. The store will reflect the eclectic mix of cultures and demographics in the surrounding area, and the hiring team wanted the employees to reflect that, too. To help identify those candidates that would be a great personality fit, Coles brought Montage on-demand video interviewing into the process.
 

Reaching Candidates

 
To reach candidates, the team advertised on local bikes, bus stops and shelters, and they also created a video to use in the recruitment process. The video gave job applicants an idea of the store concept, and what it would be like to work there. Besides sharing the video through social media, it was part of the Coles virtual foyer, where job applicants could view it before starting their on-demand video interview.
 

An Engaging Interview Process

 
Using on-demand video interviewing allowed Coles to not only sell the experience of working for the company, but also gave the candidate a different experience when applying for the job. For this particular store, Coles was looking for candidates who would understand the products and be comfortable selling them. So the interview questions reflected that – for example, one question asked candidates to describe their three favorite recipes and what they liked about them. Questions like this allowed candidates to show their personality and who they were as a person.
 

The Result

 
In the end, Coles ended up with more than 1,000 applications for 130 positions, including Olivia who submitted a very innovative and charming video of herself talking about her favorite recipes and what she will bring to the job.  The store was overwhelmed – in a positive way – to have so many great candidates from which to choose to make their store exactly what they wanted it to be.

For Christine, differentiation is key, and video interviewing allows Coles to set itself apart from other employers.

At Montage, our own candidate research supports this. 98 percent of candidates say that they have a favorable impression of a company after completing a Montage video interview. Using video interviewing technology in new and innovative ways can help build your candidate experience and strengthen your employer brand. You can do a video interview over Skype or a chat tool, but it’s not purpose built and can be frustrating for candidate and interviewer alike. Video can be engaging, personalized and authentic, and can make the difference for a candidate.
 

 

Related articles

Leave a Reply

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Sign up to our newsletter

Get a weekly digest on the latest in Talent Acquisition.

Deliver this goodness to my inbox!