Awards of Excellence 2007
Best
Practice or Program—Information Resources for Students—Employer
Consolidated Graphics—Consolidated Graphics Rebranding Campaign: Live, Learn, Lead.
In the summer of 2006, Consolidated Graphics’ (CGX) decided that its campus recruitment campaign needed some revising to attract top candidates, due to an improved economy and increased competition for those candidates. CGX also wanted to bring the program up-to-date and to highlight the company’s printing capabilities, says Rachel S. Koenig, national manager of recruiting and development.
“Printing
is what we’re all about. I wanted to showcase what we can do and the different
technologies that we use,” she explains. “Also, we wanted to drive more—and
higher quality— candidates to our web site, and ultimately achieve better
acceptance ratios.”
To determine how to improve the campaign, CGX polled new hires in Spring 2006. Their answers helped in developing the new recruiting campaign that also would be the marketing brand for CGX’s Leadership Development Program (LDP). The “Live, Learn, Lead” campaign aims to educate students on the printing industry and the opportunities available, and to guide students to submit their resumes for interviews.
“We surveyed our 71 new hires and asked questions such as when did you first learn about CGX, what other companies were prominent on campus, what was important in the recruiting process, and what could we, as a company, do to improve the recruiting process.”
Results showed that 80 percent of the new hires surveyed conducted job-search research through Internet-based resources and almost 65 percent found out about CGX through career fairs.
“That was a big constant,” Koenig says. “The majority hadn’t heard about us before that. We’re not a big donator, so we try to make an impact at career fairs. For example, we send our most recent grads from that university to represent us—they made a strong impression.”
Based on the research, the recruiting team decided the goals of the new recruiting campaign would be to educate students on the printing industry and the opopportunities available, and to apply for job opportunities.
To maintain a strong impression throughout the entire recruiting process, they created a crossmedia campaign using different communication methods to attract top students and new graduates.
Koenig and Megan Edwards, college recruiting coordinator for CGX, worked with the company’s executive vice president of sales and marketing, their CEO, and their marketing design agency to develop the Live, Learn, Lead marketing brand. All marketing materials and information targeted to students, including print, web, and e-mail documents, now incorporate the new theme.
“Initially we put pictures and the brochure on the site,” Koenig says. “A couple of people suggested using models or stock photos, but we decided against that because we wanted to present a realistic image of our company—real pictures of real associates doing real things.
“Students today want to know that what you present to them in the recruiting process is what they’re going to get,” she explains. “Printing is literally a physically dirty business; we didn’t want to present something that wasn’t accurate.”
Previously there was a disconnect between the career fair and campus interview process, Koenig says. To help repair that, they now use technology to track those students who visit the CGX booth.
“At career fairs, we take resumes and tell them to be sure to submit their resume for preselection through their campus career center,” she explains. From the resumes they gather, they put the student’s name, address, and e-mail address information into an Excel data base, and use that to create a personalized postcard for each student they meet at career fairs.
The postcard is personalized throughout, with the student’s name, the university’s name, and a personalized web site URL the student can access online. Text on the web site expresses appreciation that the student is taking a more in-depth look at CGX, and the student is asked to verify/update his or her information. After that the site offers more details and automatically sends a confirmation e-mail—also personalized.
“We are able to track the data collected on the personalized web site,” Koenig says. “If I send someone a postcard, I can tell when he or she logged on to the personalized site, and I can tell if it was simply viewed or if the person registered [by verifying the personal information].”
First put to the test during Fall 2006 recruiting, the campaign achieved its goals—to drive more students to the career fairs booth and increase the numbers of students who dropped their resumes to be considered in the on-campus interview preselection process.
“Results have been tremendous,” Koenig says. The Live, Learn, Lead program has achieved a three-year high 65 percent acceptance rate. “Normally it’s 58 to 61 percent. There was enough of a statistically significant difference that there had to be a reason: The new campaign brought in better candidates and they liked what they saw.”
CGX is not resting on the results, however. “We’re always trying to build a better mousetrap,” Koenig says. “The next element is a four-part video that will be finished soon. It will take students on a tour of one of our companies to show them what our training and development are all about.”
Echoing elements of the Live, Learn, Lead rebranding, Koenig adds, “Again, it will be real people doing real things.”
