BEST APPRENTICE/SCHOOL LEAVER RECRUITMENT STRATEGY 2018

Winner: Morrisons Makes It: Degree Apprenticeships – Morrisons in partnership with Amberjack

Morrisons has developed degree apprenticeship programmes in four areas – manufacturing, corporate, logistics and retail – delivered in partnership with the University of Bradford and Sheffield Hallam University. To ensure it recruited the right school leavers for its business, Morrisons partnered with future talent specialist Amberjack, and the two firms defined a strategy to recruit 60 degree apprentices. The strategy targeted two audiences: school leavers and influencers (parents and teachers). Candidates said that they felt Morrisons went the extra mile for them.

• The creative approach developed content that complemented and enhanced Morrisons’ new careers website with key marketing headlines. The focus was on what makes the environment, people, career opportunities and interesting initiatives unique to Morrisons.

• Messaging covered three key areas: industry insights, about Morrisons, and the world of its employees – tapping into existing employees and providing platforms to showcase their talent. The strategy targeted school leavers with ‘earn whilst you learn’ messaging, while influencers received messages that focused on tackling the concerns and worries of a school leaver’s parent.

• The targeted marketing mix included web content enhanced with videos, supported by paid media, social media, job boards engagement with local schools and live chat events. Morrisons supplemented external efforts with a huge internal push, engaging colleagues with events, leaflets, dedicated Facebook pages and emails. It held one-to-one conversations with all colleagues aged 17-21 about how they could build their careers in the business.

• The recruitment process includes a short registration, situational judgement test and video interview, where role-specific case studies featuring Morrisons colleagues provide an interactive and realistic experience. Finally, ‘discovery centres’ are held relating to the specific scheme for which candidates applied.

• Morrisons made 60 hires from 1,329 applications for its degree apprenticeship programme.

• The attraction strategy was specifically efficient in delivering a cost per applicant 97% less than average. Reneged offers were 3.33% against a market average of 15%; none of the new apprentices has left the programme. Morrisons has achieved 100% apprentice retention against an average of 79.6%.

Highly Commended:

Aldi apprenticeships campaign – Aldi in partnership with Penna

Judges’ Comments:

“This was a great end-to-end campaign that is embedded in the business and built for the long term. There was a clear focus in every step of the strategy.”