L’Oréal, recently commissioned an innovative approach to online recruiting. The idea was that the recruitment system should:
- Reflect the company brand, culture and business operations.
- Appeal to diverse demographics and professionals.
- Convey the multiple career paths and opportunities available.
- Embed online assessments within the interactive experience.
To meet these demands, a series of online assessments unique to the company were designed and integrated in a web 2.0 multi-site game called Reveal. The site allows candidates to assimilate various roles within respective divisions, gain direct insight and assess their compatibility for working within the organisation.
François de Wazières, Director of International Recruitment, L’Oréal explained, “Using off-the-shelf assessments was never an option for us. From the start, we knew that we would need assessment instruments that were fully tailored to reflect the L’Oréal brand and would provide candidates with a challenging, yet insightful and enjoyable experience.”
Designing and testing unique content
Taking the company’s L’Oréal & Me competencies, Cubiks set about designing assessments that would combine two key elements:
- Situational judgment questions—these ask candidates to assume that they are an employee and indicate how they would react to a typical workplace scenario by selecting from a range of different response options.
- Problem solving questions—these ask candidates to anaylse information using their numerical and verbal reasoning skills.
These two assessments were created using data collected from 200 in-house professionals. Once the test content had been developed, the material was then tested through an online pilot involving 700 employees.
The content for the candidate feedback screens was then developed via collaboration with the company’s team of writers to ensure consistency with the language used across the Reveal game as a whole. Following analysis of the results, all necessary modifications were made and assessment benchmarks set. Norm Groups were developed after the assessments had been created by a group of live ‘gamers’.
The Reveal game, including all assessment components, was launched globally in January 2010 with great success. The new solution is playing a key role in helping the company promote its crucial brand values and reach out to talented people from a range of academic disciplines. Furthermore, by enabling candidates to assess their fit with the business culture, and make informed decisions regarding the likely success of their application in a fun and informative environment, the game is proving to be very popular with the target candidate population.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
