How Rolls-Royce connected with a diverse cohort of early careers candidates through live events and nurture journeys

About the Customer

The Challenge

Enable Rolls-Royce to engage with more diverse candidates and change perception of the accessibility of a career with them.

The overriding purpose behind The Power Series was to engage with a more diverse audience, one that we were told felt a career with Rolls-Royce was out of reach, or not a realistic option. At the same time, Rolls-Royce still needed to appeal to graduates and students who were actively seeking career opportunities with the company. Landing this balance was central to our approach.

Renowned as ‘pioneers of power’, Rolls-Royce has become synonymous with the word ‘power’, but we aimed to turn the meaning on its head with The Power Series.

Objectives

Our Solution

Rolls-Royce used Meet & Engage, Unseen’s candidate experience and onboarding platform, to deliver The Power Series; a program of 6 virtual events aimed at engaging candidates who may have considered a career with Rolls-Royce unattainable. Post-event, attendees were to be invited to access a bespoke nurture track, to support them through their entire application journey.

Live Virtual Events

The Meet & Engage technology used by Rolls-Royce includes:

• Pre- and post-event automated email comms and registration
• Branded pre- and post-event lobby areas
• Content sharing via live stream, pre-recorded video, polls, slides
• Fully moderated Q&A
• NPS candidate experience data

Automated Nurture Journey

• Automated candidate journey in a personalized social-style interface
• Content shared by wall posts, videos and articles
• Email nudges to see fresh content
• User candidate experience pulse checks

Launch

The Power Series launched in October 2021 with a brave decision to lead with ‘Courage’ – the event with a focus on neurodiversity. Although slightly smaller in number, the audience were so appreciative and engaged by the opportunity, hearing directly from interns, graduates and senior leaders about how they have adapted, been successful, and demonstrated to Rolls- Royce why neurodiverse people are so important to continued innovation and growth.

Student feedback was very positive: “I found the networking and support for each other amazing”. We ran a Power Series event every three weeks, with the titles Belief, Wisdom, Collaboration, Imagination and Curiosity. Each event saw more attendees than the previous, as awareness and interest grew. Our nurture tracks also grew in numbers, particularly amongst the apprentice / school leaver audience.

Results

More than doubled offers made to non-white candidates, with a substantial rise in both applications and offers to women and non-white candidates. Glowing feedback from participants.

Feedback

Across all events, there were 1,475 attendees and engaged with 1,605 students. The average NPS score from those attending the events was 73% (world class!) and a third of attendees (Rolls-Royce’s benchmark) engaged with the nurture journeys. The nurture journeys featured smiley face feedback and Sukhy, a candidate experience bot.

Smiley face feedback

Participant Feedback

Conclusion

The Power Series built on work carried out within assessment to address and remove barriers to entry, particularly the misconception that Rolls- Royce are only interested in certain demographics and backgrounds. This included removing degree classifications, changing from competency to behavioural assessment where possible, and removing any online testing which was potentially disadvantaging students from minority ethnic backgrounds, to provide equal opportunities at each stage.

The Power Series helped develop focus on behaviours and values that are needed to lead Rolls-Royce into the future, and reinforced the desire to attract students from diverse backgrounds, which is one of their top priorities globally. Rolls-Royce have a hiring strategy centred around three focus areas: Outreach, Access, and Selection, underpinned by the ‘attract’ pillar from the group D&I strategy. The Power Series, as part of this, made sure they could reach, attract and select from the widest and deepest diverse talent pools.

As with many other organisations, 2020-21 gave Rolls-Royce the opportunity to rethink, refresh, and reinvent how they attract and recruit diverse early careers talent, but mainly it accelerated plans to take student attraction virtual. Shifting to social media platforms, online events and creating useful digital content has helped Rolls-Royce to reach students they haven’t been able to engage with before. All of this has meant they are leading the way with digital attraction and assessment, transforming the traditional employer brand relationship.