School Leavers Case-study – Nestlé
budgets means recruiters cannot be everywhere. To reach out to the volumes of schools and colleges in an engaging yet efficient way, and to engender young people’s interest for the opportunities you have to offer, a blended approach, as used in Learning and Development, works well. Use technology and gamification to reach them and widen your scale of engagement. Do not inundate students with masses of emails, but be creative; and follow up with targeted face-to- face interactions to convert that initial interest into quality applications.
Whatever new strategies and activities you decide upon, it is critical to keep the students at the heart of everything you do. It is worth remembering the surprising fact that many students, despite their bravado, are unconfident when it comes to their future career aspirations, and sadly this is especially true with pupils from less privileged backgrounds. Whilst they could find help and advice online, it is unlikely to build their confidence and ambition (our research highlighted that only 14% of young people look for employment guidance on the internet). The best way to develop this them is through face-to-face interaction with inspiring people, and I don’t mean celebrities. Our experience shows that hearing from their peers on apprenticeships or school leaver programmes have a positive impact in altering their perceptions and letting them know what is possible.
Over the years, my message has remained consistent when asked about the recruitment of young people. It is not easy, and having the same efficiencies and success in school leaver recruitment as in your graduate recruitment is a big challenge. However, take the time to really engage with young people, help them get a real ‘feel’ for the huge breadth of roles available to them, and give them the opportunity to then take the initiative and – they will ‘step up’. The more you give to them, the more great potential hires employers will have, as well as a truly sustainable talent pipeline for the future.
Nestlé is the world’s leading nutrition, health and wellness company. It is a major player within the UK and Irish food industry, employing 8,000 employees across 21 sites. It produces some of Britain’s best-loved brands, such as Kit Kat, Nescafé and Buxtons. Nestlé is one of the UK and Ireland’s food industry’s major exporters, selling over £346m worth of products every year to more than 70 countries around the world.
Objectives Nestlé aims to offer at least 20,000 employment opportunities for young people across Europe by 2016. In the UK, the company has partnered with MyKindaFuture to deliver a three- year work experience programme for young people as part of this pledge. While Nestlé traditionally provides work experience opportunities across its UK offices and factories, they have never before offered these opportunities as part of the wider initiative.
Nestlé and MyKindaFuture have built a work experience programme with the aim to provide 75 young people with meaningful work experience over three years. Furthermore, the attraction campaign is designed to engage 4,000 young people in 40 schools and 12,000 young people online by 2016. It will provide inspirational employability training, promote routes into the industry and dispel myths surrounding food manufacturing.
The project Now in its second year, Nestlé and MyKindaFuture have already sourced 20 young people aged 14-19 from disadvantaged schools to benefit from a two-week paid work experience placement which took place at Nestlé sites – offices and factories - across the UK (York, Gatwick, Tutbury and Dalston). Successful candidates were able to get work experience in a number of departments: Marketing, HR, Supply Chain, Legal, etc.
To ‘earn’ a place on the programme, students had to take part in one of the 20 workshops we delivered on behalf of Nestlé into local schools. Nestlé representatives from across the business attended and supported the delivery of these workshops, allowing them to build sustainable relationships with relevant schools and teachers that can be maintained and leveraged going forward.
The best students were invited to four regional Skills and Assessment Days at Nestlé’s key hubs, and after an inspiring day of skills training and team-based activities, the 20 winning students were awarded a coveted place on the Nestlé Work Experience Programme.
In addition, we ran a series of termly online challenges aimed at schools nationally. The challenges allowed Nestlé to reach a mass audience, raise awareness of their employer brand and demonstrate their commitment to issues such as sustainability, food provenance, and health and nutrition.
Year two has seen a focus on STEM, and in particular encouraging more girls into STEM careers. As part of this, we are creating a STEM focused online game and Nestlé has increased the number of factories offering work experience to four. As the programme aims at promoting social mobility, we target schools with a high percentage of students eligible for free school meals, increasing the number of schools visited this year to 30 and work experience placements on offer to 25. Fiona Kendrick, Nestlé’s UK&I CEO, says ‘I am delighted to be working on the critical area of youth employment and skills. Attracting new talent and investing in skills for the future is key to the continued success of our business.’ n
www.agr.org.uk | Graduate Recruiter 19
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