Janice Chalmers talks to Fionna Alcorn

Fionna Alcorn, head of recruitment, Nestlé UK shares her own experience of revamping Nestlé's employer brand on the recruitment side.

Our starting point was some internal and external focus-group research which compared perceptions of existing and prospective employees. The external perception was that Nestlé was 'steady', 'grey', 'middle-aged',[the then] John Major! We knew this didn't match what Nestlé is really like to work for, but good engineers, for example, were joining other companies because they didn't realise that we have some of the most sophisticated coffee manufacturing equipment in the world.

The move to online
We started asking ourselves about the candidate's experience and perception of us as a company. For example, we asked 'what does an external applicant see of Nestlé?', and this led us to our website, which was dull. At that stage we were also totally under-using the PeopleBank technology that we'd already bought.

From there we looked at our job ads, which were the same as everyone else's. It wasn't that our employer brand was all about products. It did have job information. But it was dull.

What's changed?
We've completely revamped the website and the whole application experience to let candidates see what it's really like to work here. Now, when they come, they get a CD ROM about life at Nestlé - and the mere fact of giving them a CD sends out a different message about us as a company. Everything they're given has a sense of humour and a bit of quirk to it - so the candidate will start to think, "I didn't think those Swiss bods were like that".

Plans for the future?
Our overall aim is to generate traffic to our website, and to build our own candidate database of (especially) first and second jobbers. We've held back a little on online branding for internal corporate reasons, but now we're ready for the push. For example, as well as revamping our website, and making better use of the recruitment technology we have, we've done deals with Milkround online, we're looking at email newsletters to candidates, and even text messaging candidates - did you know you can now text people who are going to get a 2:1 in engineering?

On ownership of Nestlé's employer brand

HR in driving seat
HR owns it in terms of all communication that goes to the candidate. The original team that worked on employer branding comprised managers from corporate HR, internal communications, recruitment services and senior managers from within the business. Now it is entirely owned by recruitment advertising working with our external recruitment advertising agency.

Marketing's role
Marketing is not involved. I mean, if we want to use a corporate brand image in a particular way in our recruitment advertising, then they [marketing] have to approve the use of the image but, apart from that, they're not involved. And I can't see what marketing would be doing owning employer brand, but I suppose it depends on what your employer branding is trying to achieve. At Nestlé, our aim is for people to want to work for Nestlé.

I do have to say, though, that we've also been helped by a shift on the corporate and product marketing side. Before, the products used to be advertised under the product name alone, eg 'Carnation milk', but now it's 'Nestlé Carnation milk', and that has definitely helped raise awareness of Nestlé as a company.

Board involvement
In our case, the original project approval was done mostly as an HR issue at director level and, as issues go, it isn't a big one for a board to worry about - we're talking about recruitment campaigns!

So whose job is it anyway? Click here to read what the experts think.