Challenging Recruitment
Unconventional Recruitment
Launched in 1992, L’Oréal’s business game, Brandstorm, offers a unique opportunity for students to unleash their creativity and apply ground-breaking ideas to one of the firm’s 32 international brands and distribution channels. This international business and marketing competition helps seek out the best marketers in the UK and attain our aim of reaching 1 billion new consumers in 2020. Hannah Neal, Graduate Programme Coordinator, UK & Ireland talks about the impact of the business game and how it has given more than 80,000 students worldwide the possibility to work on real life challenges…
A
s the world’s no.1 cosmetics company, we encourage all of our employees to take risks
and challenge the norms; to do this; we need the best talent to identify the next big trends and create innovative or entrepreneurial ideas. Brandstorm is an exciting global initiative which builds students’ employability skills, helps them enhance their CVs and potentially land a top undergraduate or graduate job.
Students form teams of three who are typically asked to come up with a new product range for a L’Oréal brand. Teams from different universities across the UK compete against each other and the winners of all 44 countries taking part in the competition then progress to our head office in Paris. The finalists get the opportunity to experience an all- expenses paid trip to Paris, compete at an international level and have a chance of winning the top prize (a £8,000 holiday).
A real life experience We believe this is not only about the monetary prize and the game itself; this is about being able to reach out to the creative and entrepreneurial minds across the top UK universities. At L’Oréal, we are looking for a diverse pool of talent and to identify future leaders. We want to allow passionate students to express
12 Graduate Recruiter |
www.agr.org.uk
their creative flair and be as innovative as possible, for example by designing a new product range for one of our divisions or a new travel retail experience for one of our 32 international brands.
As well as promoting the competition through our social platforms, we partner with specific universities such as Leeds and York. This enables students to start working at L’Oréal either on a placement year or just after graduating rather than going through our normal graduate recruitment process. Nicola Clemmit, Placement Coordinator at York Management School explains: “L’Oréal Brandstorm is a unique, challenging and massively rewarding competition for our students. It has been a great experience to watch them excel and to support them along this journey. We are very proud of what our students have achieved, particularly as this is the first year the University of York has collaborated with L’Oréal on this competition. We learned a lot from the process and I can’t wait to renew our engagement next year!”
Brandstorm has a record of real life success stories of students coming onto our Management Trainee scheme to becoming senior leaders of a particular L’Oréal brand. James Rickards, now General Manager of Lancôme, talks about
the career opportunities Brandstorm has given him: “In my situation, Brandstorm was an amazing opportunity to get a real marketing experience, diving into customer insight and analysis on the one hand and playing with creative concepts on the other, eventually coming up with a winning product concept and launch strategy. It was fantastic - fun but also very informative. It really helped me decide to pursue my career in marketing’.
Wider Impact
As all graduate recruiters, we are competing every year to attract the attention of ambitious undergraduates and graduates. Brandstorm has allowed us to do just that with real-life results. Many accomplished students have participated in the business game and have been spotted throughout as individuals who would add a lot of value to L’Oréal. Following the competition, they have been fast tracked to assessment centre and interview process. Year on year, the talented students we hire on our graduate schemes, industrial placements or summer internships demonstrate that the game provides a different dimension to the recruitment space.
Jane Fieldsend, a graduate from the University of York, was hired through Brandstorm in 2015. Here she speaks
@LOrealGradJobs
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