An agile approach to attraction

When your name’s as well-known as Deloitte’s, your marketing challenge isn’t so much about attracting people, as attracting the RIGHT people. Which is where having an agile, responsive attraction strategy comes into its own.

Deloitte successfully attract a high volume of experienced hire and early careers applications from a relatively small pool of talent. But they were keen to raise the quality of these applications, increase progression through the application process, and diversify their reach through more proactive and targeted attraction methods.

Engaging with high value STEM audiences, who didn’t necessarily see Deloitte as a natural employer of choice for tech careers, was a must. As was connecting with the hearts and minds of a much more diverse range of people. People just starting out in their career and those with vast levels of experience. All united by their ambition, talent and curious minds.

Flexibility was key

We had regular catch-ups with relevant recruitment teams to understand their key priorities, and explored the best mix of channels for their campaign activity and messaging. By using managed digital channels, such as paid search, paid social and programmatic advertising, we were able to flexibly adapt our focus to meet any volume, quality or diversity challenges that Deloitte were experiencing.

It was about switching things on and off. Evaluating. Adapting. And responding to ever-changing needs and increasingly diverse audiences. For the early careers campaign in particular, we used our proprietary YWare research data to identify institutions where more female and BAME students were studying subjects aligned to the opportunities Deloitte offers. This then fed into the campaign activity.

To stretch Deloitte’s reach further we also used video broadcast via YouTube and audio broadcast via Global DAX. This involved using dynamic audio with a script that changed based on a range of factors to provide a more personal and relevant experience, while content partnerships with The Student Room helped to challenge perceptions and showcase careers in different areas of Deloitte.

We shaped-up in all the right places

The strategy paid off with results that made a measurable difference across all key metrics for both the experienced hire and early careers campaigns. Year on year, we achieved the following:

Experienced hire:

• Overall reduction in media driven applications by 2.5%
• Increase in female applications from 38% to 40%
• Progression rates to 1st interview stage increased by 15.4% and to offer by 9.8%
• Progression rates among female candidates increased by 17.8% to 1st interview and 12.8% to offer.

Early careers:

• Increase in female applications from 41% to 43%
• Increase in BAME applications from 46% to 47%
• Increase in progression to Immersive Online Assessment (IOA) from 43% to 51%
• Increase in progression to IOA among female audiences from 44% to 52%
• Increase in progression to IOA among BAME audiences from 45% to 53%
• Total applications for apprenticeships also increased by 18.7% from last year.