Who do you think you are talking to?' TARGETjobs Breakfast News June 2014

Quaglino’sWednesday 25 June 2014

Who do you think you are talking to?

Director, GTI Media

Simon Rogers

Breakfast News in 2014

27 February – Being strategic

7 May – Swimming the channels

Today – Who do you think you are talking to?

18 September – Sourcing and selection

27 November – Onboarding and retention

AgendaWelcome and Graduate Confidence Index

Simon Rogers 

The economic forecast

Declan Curry, Broadcaster, Business & Economics journalist

The attention economy

Nick Jankel, Founder & CEO, WeCreate Worldwide

The five essential attributes for making sure your message reaches students

Dr Paul Redmond, President of AGCAS and Director of Employability & Educational Opportunities, University of Liverpool, with an introduction

from Stephen Isherwood, CEO, Association of Graduate Recruiters

 Do graduate employers need a messaging strategy – or is it an excuse for creative self-indulgence?

Henry Oliver, Research Manager, Work Group

Getting your message out via

Average response rates by sectorAverage company profile page views

Average company profile CTR

Average graduate vacancy advert page views

Average graduate vacancy advert CTR

Average work experience vacancy advert page views

Average work experience vacancy advert CTR

Construction 2,459 22% 772 25% 1,622 34%

Finance 2,799 17% 2,168 28% 1,387 32%

Engineering 5,095 17% 1,784 31% 475 26%

Investment 4,351 25% 2,404 29% 1,554 23%

IT 3,676 20% 1,782 28% 1,260 28%

Law Solicitors

4,374 21% 1,990 29% 1,096 26%

Retail 3,676 20% 1,782 28% 1,260 28%

• The UK’s first quarterly graduate confidence index, based on poll of 7,500 students

• Measures students’ confidence in gaining graduate employment after graduation

• Results by gender, degree, year of study, location, ethnicity and university

• Updated at Breakfast News to show trends and inform the market

74May 2014

75June 2014

#MrToast

We want to hear from you via twitter

Declan CurryJournalist and broadcaster

The economic forecast

Nick Jankel, Founder & CEO, WeCreate Worldwide

The attention economy

Stephen Isherwood, CEO, Association of Graduate Recruiters

AGR Student Recruitment Conference

• 10-11 July, ACC Arena Liverpool• Four keynote sessions; 20+

Thought Leadership, Masterclass, Practical Takeaway sessions

• Network with over 400 student recruitment professionals

• Awards dinner hosted by Ruby Wax

• AGR.org.uk for details

Dr Paul Redmond

President of AGCAS and Director of Employability & Educational Opportunities, University of Liverpool

The five essential attributes for making sure your message reaches students

How do students want you to contact them?

1. Personal.

“Events should be designed for my course [Town Planning] and timed to suit us.”

“Careers talks should not be scheduled for deadline days or days when we have our weekly practical sessions.”

“There is only one event which we could join in, which was the […] one, and unfortunately it was on deadline day, so for me, that is ridiculous! What you should do is get in touch first to try to find out what is a better time and definitely not deadline day!”

“Use cookies to make communications more specific to me.”

2. Integrated.

“[I want to meet with employers] In a relaxed atmosphere with food and drink.”

“At events like the Careers in Maths event.”

“Employer events should take place in the evening, so I don’t have to miss lectures.”

“Better to meet employers at the end of the year when everyone is free of deadlines and not so busy.”

“Market the employer meetings as being for all year groups with “everyone is welcome” tag.”

3. Early. year

“I definitely agree that we should be introduced to the careers service a lot earlier, simply because I didn’t think there was much going on in first and second year, and then in third year that’s when lecturers are saying “ok, you should start thinking about what you want to do”. I’d rather have it in first year and know this is what I need to expect instead of all the pressure on in third year.”

“Make it compulsory that first years book on a tour of the careers service (like they have to do on the library tour).”

4. 4. Multi-Channel.

“Have an accept or decline tick-box on emails you send about events so that if you accept it goes into your calendar and you keep getting reminders about it (as Outlook emails).”

“[Use] Twitter and Facebook to drive traffic to the web.”

“When sending emails, consider the amount of emails students receive from different sources and the devices (screen sizes) they are using to view the information.”

“On your e-mail you have to go out of your way to look for something... whereas on Facebook and Twitter I think that it’s just something you see when you’re scrolling down your newsfeeds. So you don’t need to see it [but you do].”

“I like that the e-mails are sent out with a list of the new things because I’m not good at checking the website...I don’t really think to do that.”

5. Informal.

“I want to meet employers at smaller sessions - not so small you feel like you’re being interviewed but not more than 20-30 people so you can still speak out.”

“Informally at the careers service in the evening to chat to employers.”

Takeaways

1. It’s all about partnerships.

2. One compelling story beats 100 corporate slides.

3. Don’t underestimate the alumni-effect.

4. Are you really sure you want to do a presentation?

5. Students don’t drink red wine.

Henry Oliver, Research Manager, Work Group

Do graduate employers need a messaging strategy – or is it an excuse for creative self-indulgence?

Why do we have messaging strategies?

1. To attract top graduates

2. To attract local skilled graduates

3. To attract vocational graduates

4. To attract confused, generic graduates

5. To attract graduates who aren’t listening

• To attract top graduatesOxbridge, Russell Group, science and humanities

City, law, management consulting

• To attract local skilled graduatesUnis within convenient radius, departmental relationships, alumni

Engineers, leadership, hard to recruit

• To attract vocational graduatesRange of unis depending on subject

STEM, law, business, fashion

• To attract confused, generic graduatesHistory students – law or advertising or publishing?

• To attract graduates who aren’t listeningOver 50% of final-year students have no expectation of getting a graduate job

Attracting top graduates

There are 350,000 graduates a year and 23,00 AGR vacancies

You don’t need a messaging strategy

Can you guess who pays above the average?

• Investment bank £38,250

• Law firm £37,000

• Financial £28,750

• IT/Telecoms £28,500

It is thought that the message is simple, and doesn’t need refining …

“These are not particularly impressive individuals.” Lord Lawson said the youthful energy needed to be a trader was not in short supply: “They’re all of them easily replaced, particularly in today’s labour market.”

This is not what happens

There isn’t any significant difference between the various brands of

law firms, or finance firms or banks. They are all about the same.

And so are the management consultancies and the IT companies,

and the accountants … The company who dedicates its advertising to

building the most sharply defined personality for its brand will get

the largest share of the market at the highest profit.

There isn’t any significant difference between the various brands of

whiskey, or cigarettes or beer. They are all about the same. And so

are the cake mixes and the detergents, and the margarines… The

manufacturer who dedicates his advertising to building the most

sharply defined personality for his brand will get the largest share of

the market at the highest profit.

David Ogilvy

In a crowded market, where big professional service employers are trying to distinguish themselves on all sort of spurious grounds, is there value in an honest straightforward campaign?

It pays to boil down your strategy to one simple promise – and then go the whole hog in delivering that promise.

David Ogilvy

You want our money.

We want your energy.

Over 80% of FTSE 100 companies have a Chartered Accountant on their board

J.P. Morgan graduate brochure 2005

Accenture graduate brochure 2002

Attracting graduates who are not listening

After we have cleared out those graduates who know where they want

to go, and those who know what they want to do, we are left with over

half of undergraduates.

How do you get the attention of someone who isn’t listening?

The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.

The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.

Not all graduates are the same

The mistake common to all of these messaging errors is to treat

“graduates” as a homogenous bloc. Having a 2.1 is merely a signal.

Aggregations can be misleading. If you want interesting, enquiring

minds in your company, you should not be interested in signals. You

should be interested in skills and character.

For all the statistics published about school performance, there is

only one figure I really want to know. Among past graduates of your

school or university, how many are still reading widely for pleasure

five, ten and 25 years after leaving?

Rory Sutherland, Vice-Chairman, Ogilvy & Mather UK

There is an easy method by which you can develop a

message that is true and interesting, will make you more

appealing than the competition, and can be used to find the

odds and sods who aren’t already queuing up at your door,

but who may turn out to be the best hires you ever make …

Don’t Panic!

Aristotle’s Rhetoric Triangle

Ethos

PathosLogos

Aristotle’s principles of rhetoric

1. Ethos – the character of the speaker

2. Pathos – the emotions of the audience

3. Logos – the logic of the argument

Very often, this is the order of priority – the speaker’s character can change the emotions of the audience, and make us see the logic from a new perspective.

Ethos

PathosLogos

Ethos

PathosLogos

Take a closer look … Ethos

PathosLogos

The Audience

Although the speaker (i.e. the business) can be the most

important aspect, the message must be created with the

audience in mind. The Logos, the argument, is necessary

but not sufficient. For a message to succeed it must be

targeted at the right people in the right way.Ethos

PathosLogos

Why should the people

you want to hire work for you and for nobody else?

Why should the people

you want to hire work for you and for nobody else?

Ethos

Why should the people

you want to hire work for you and for nobody else?

Ethos

Pathos

Why should the people

you want to hire work for you and for nobody else?

Ethos

Pathos

Logos

Look familiar?

Why should the people

you want to hire work for you and for nobody else?

Ethos

Pathos

Logos

Employee Value Proposition Triangle

Employer

Job Candidate

WHY?

Once you see things from this point of view, the messaging becomes easier – because it becomes more honest.

Work Group: Research Analyst

Numerate graduate tells big employer what to do

Work Group: Trainee Business Writer

What can you do with a degree in English?

Trainee Business Writer 

What can you do with an English degree?Work is the engagement and resourcing business that helps employers find, keep and motivate the people they need. Our consulting team is now looking for a Writer-Analyst to work on a range of internal and external communications tasks, from employee engagement campaigns to business change programmes. This is a hugely rewarding way to write for a living that offers substantial scope for personal and professional development.

Chaos and teaseYou will rarely be working from a formal brief because part of our job is to clarify the communication challenge. Correlating information and research from many different sources, you will bring order out of chaos and tease coherent themes from even the densest corporate undergrowth. And then you’ll write something clear, fresh and vivid to get your message across. After which, we will probably cover it in red ink and encourage you to have another go.

What you hopedConsulting with Work requires absolute commitment to client fortunes and a belief in the importance of what you are doing. You will soon be working on client-facing projects, although you will be very closely mentored at first. We are looking for a bright, highly motivated graduate who already has at least a year’s business experience; it may be that you have embarked on a career path in some other field of professional services which wasn’t quite what you hoped.

Pundits carpingWherever you are coming from, you must be one of life’s high-achievers, who is already using words – spoken and written – to get what you want. A good degree in English will count in your favour, not least because we are tired of pundits carping about useless arts graduates. Join us and you will be helping to put the wheels back on the economy in a very tangible way. To apply, please send a CV and a piece of writing that shows what you can do but isn’t a poem about your cat.

One online posting cost £475

There were over 200 applications

Most were poor-quality or irrelevant

10 invited for first interview

5 taken to final assessment

3 jobs filled, good candidates to spare

Pra

ctis

ing

wha

t we

prea

ch

henry.oliver@workcomms.com020 7492 0084

Let us know what you think

Don’t miss out – deadlines almost here

Thank you & good luck Peter Griggs

Thursday 18 September

The Happenstance

Next event