JTI Case study: How can a recruiter organise an international internship in 3 months

I have been working at JTI for 2 years. After completing an internship, I got to employer branding. Internship programs are one of the most important tools to attract new employees. JTI is the second largest tobacco producer in the world, and has long been picking talents in the company this way. For beginners, this is a great opportunity to gain practical knowledge and start your career.

There are many willing candidates, so choosing among them the best is a real challenge. This year we have a new program - Make it Bright.

Make it Bright is an important internship for us. The program is focused on the generation Z. For the company, these are generators of new ideas and, in the future, implementers of concepts that will improve the JTI service. Make It Bright is an international internship, finalists from Russia after the regional selection will go to the finals in Geneva to compete with participants from other countries. In Switzerland, one team will win - it will go on an internship abroad to Zambia for two months to participate in a social project to prevent the exploitation of child labor. The program is already successfully working in 17 countries, and it was important to select truly the best candidates.

At the start, we faced a number of challenges in completely different areas.

Deadlines
At the end of November, the head office has set up a task for us and showed us a concept that we needed to implement in March. 3 months is a fairly short period for organizing internships according to international standards.

Storage of candidates personal data exclusively on Russian servers
Since July 2017, personal data of Russian Federation citizens should be stored and processed on Russian servers. Therefore, unlike other participating countries, we could not just copy the concept and do an internship on the global platform makeitbright.com, we had to look for another way.

Team registration
The competition was held between teams, each consisted of 2 people. It was important for us to connect the participants at all stages of the selection, since the results of each individual would reflected in the team standings. If one of the partners fell out of the competition, the team was automatically removed from the competition.

Simultaneous assessment of candidates by 5 employees according to several criteria
We are looking for interns in all areas: from HR to marketing. We wanted several people to evaluate the candidates according to the criteria at once: both hiring managers and members of the team units. The interface was supposed to be as clear and simple for everyone, and the grades should be immediately displayed in the account.

The first step for us was solving the technical issue with Russian servers. It was necessary to choose a platform on which the selection of candidates would be held. We have already worked with VCV as part of the JUMP internship. We had some good results at that time, because the whole process became fully automated and fast by 3 times, and only one person became fully engaged in recruiting. Therefore, first of all, we turned to them to find out if they can implement Make It Bright.

After we built the selection mechanics, the candidate's path was constructed in this way:

Implementation of the project in a short time. In just 3 months, we have successfully created a complete project from the concept.

New platform with functionality. Together with VCV, we transferred important functionality to Russian servers without violating the law and without losing information. At the moment, only 8 teams from different cities of Russia have already passed the off-line stage in the office.

A comfortable selection process. During the selection, hiring managers and recruiters were able to easily look through the necessary candidates and leave comments. And the comments of the colleagues were clearly reflected in the personal account of each candidate.

Increasing audience loyalty. For Make it bright, the use of technology has became a trigger that has allowed to attract representatives of the generation Z. We receive a large number of positive reviews about the program and its implementation. Participants continue to attend JTI's internal events and are even more interested in future internships.

Internship Results. Now the program is at the stage of developing ideas. We selected eight offers in Moscow, four in St. Petersburg. Then the participants will work with business cases, after which we will choose the winner.