| CASES
Every year L'Oreal organizes a business game for students. As a result, the best of scholars taking part in it receive an offer for a summer internship in L'Oreal. This is just one of the graduate recruitment possibilities in the company: there are semiannual trainings for students and a graduate development program as well. The competition for the internship is a serious one - up to 200 people for one place. Company recruiters use different methods and approaches in order to select the most promising students.
How we reduced the duration of the new interns selection by 7 times
The young talents
Graduate recruitment is one of the most vital employment areas in L'Oreal. Talented students and alumnis come to intern for us, the best of them continue to work in the company and even become the top managers further on.
Students in general may not have as much experience, so we overview many factors: how a person communicates and sees the future career, why he or she wants to develop oneself exactly in L'Oreal. We check the candidates' level of English and their ability to deal with numbers. We also pay attention to their academic achievements and extracurricular life, or to the confident knowledge in the field that is useful for the internship. Certainly, the ability to work in a team and alacrity to lead the processes plays a huge role as well.
Students in general may not have as much experience, so we overview many factors: how a person communicates and sees the future career, why he or she wants to develop oneself exactly in L'Oreal. We check the candidates' level of English and their ability to deal with numbers. We also pay attention to their academic achievements and extracurricular life, or to the confident knowledge in the field that is useful for the internship. Certainly, the ability to work in a team and alacrity to lead the processes plays a huge role as well.
Optimization of graduate recruitment
There are up to 2,000 applications received for a summer internship and we need to make our choice in 3-4 weeks. If we imagine that we held a 15-minute phone interview with at least half of the candidates each, then we would spend 250 hours or more than 1.5 months of work just on that.
In order to save time but also to evaluate each candidate carefully, we conduct a selection by using several stages. The video format is fitting our system perfectly: in this way, you can both see the candidate and hear his answers to the main questions in a few minutes. While searching for a technological solution to that, we chose the VCV service, which allowed us to solve this problem.
The format with recorded video responses seems to us one of the most convenient solutions for personnel selection, especially invented recently. The service is available to the candidate and the recruiter as well at any time and at any place where there is the Internet. Approximately 30% of candidates use their mobile devices to record their answers. The recruiter forms a response to the applicant and assigns a status to his result directly in the system. There is an opportunity to see his CV and his contacts quickly. This is a great time saver.
In order to save time but also to evaluate each candidate carefully, we conduct a selection by using several stages. The video format is fitting our system perfectly: in this way, you can both see the candidate and hear his answers to the main questions in a few minutes. While searching for a technological solution to that, we chose the VCV service, which allowed us to solve this problem.
The format with recorded video responses seems to us one of the most convenient solutions for personnel selection, especially invented recently. The service is available to the candidate and the recruiter as well at any time and at any place where there is the Internet. Approximately 30% of candidates use their mobile devices to record their answers. The recruiter forms a response to the applicant and assigns a status to his result directly in the system. There is an opportunity to see his CV and his contacts quickly. This is a great time saver.
Internship candidate's selection
The amount and the order of selection stages for students in L'Oreal depends on the types of internships and activities. There is something common between the screening schemes: all of them are more or less automated. For example, the candidate for a summer internship passes through such stages:
We improved the performance for all the screening criteria and increased our efficiency just by introducing new technology for the candidates' selection through video. This format often replaces the telephone interview. In such way, the initial acquaintance with the applicant takes a maximum of 10-12 minutes. Now we have the opportunity to choose from the higher amount of people with the help of new digital tools.
- Digital online test (via VCV)
- Video interview (via VCV)
- Offline-assessment (a business game) in the office
We improved the performance for all the screening criteria and increased our efficiency just by introducing new technology for the candidates' selection through video. This format often replaces the telephone interview. In such way, the initial acquaintance with the applicant takes a maximum of 10-12 minutes. Now we have the opportunity to choose from the higher amount of people with the help of new digital tools.
Our Life Hacks on using digital interview
Ten questions We usually ask candidates 8-10 questions. Their preparation time depends on the complexity of the question: from 30 seconds to 1.5 minutes. The applicants have almost two minutes to give an answer, so that they can structure their thoughts and form a clear reply.
The questions' examples:
- Name 2-3 of your achievements (academic and extracurricular).
- What are the brand manager main responsibilities?
- Which digital-marketing tools can be used by a large company?
- Estimate the number of the Maybelline brand potential buyers (this is an analytical question for testing logical skills).
The refusal to record the video as one of the selection criteria Candidates rarely refuse to record their video answers. On the contrary, it is convenient and interesting for students. Moreover, many of them used to record video interview before. Therefore, the refusal to go through it often means their lack of motivation. The agreement to make video answers is the additional selection criteria for us. Of course, there are some exceptions when the candidate contacts us and asks to reschedule the interview for a certain reason.
The questions' examples:
- Name 2-3 of your achievements (academic and extracurricular).
- What are the brand manager main responsibilities?
- Which digital-marketing tools can be used by a large company?
- Estimate the number of the Maybelline brand potential buyers (this is an analytical question for testing logical skills).
The refusal to record the video as one of the selection criteria Candidates rarely refuse to record their video answers. On the contrary, it is convenient and interesting for students. Moreover, many of them used to record video interview before. Therefore, the refusal to go through it often means their lack of motivation. The agreement to make video answers is the additional selection criteria for us. Of course, there are some exceptions when the candidate contacts us and asks to reschedule the interview for a certain reason.
80% of invited applicants pass the video interview stage
We save time and reduce costs for the candidates' screening using new selection tools. In addition, L'Oreal is going through constant digital transformation, so the introduction of new technologies is one of our priority areas.