Sometimes if you want to be innovative you need to challenge the status quo by taking the tried and tested ways of working and turning them on their head. Often you’ll find they are tried and tested for a reason but sometimes subverting the norm will bring results that make everyone think differently.
On the show last year I talked to Neil Morrison the Group HRD at Penguin Random House about an experimental entry level recruitment programme his team were running know as The Scheme. One year on The Scheme has been so successful Penguin Random House are running it again and I was keen to catch up with Neil to find out what they had learned.
In the interview we discuss:
- What it is like to run a recruitment process with no CVs or insight into the background of the candidates
- Why Penguin Random House have now dropped the requirement to have a degree from all of their roles
- Things they learned from the Scheme last year and what they are doing differently in 2016
- How they are using Snap Chat as a platform to promote this year’s programme.
Neil also gives us his thoughts on the future of graduate recruitment and some advice for any employers thinking of having their own version of The Scheme.
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Cielo. Cielo is the world’s leading provider of global recruitment process outsourcing and related solutions spanning the talent lifecycle from employer branding to onboarding. Cielo takes a we become you approach to RPO that provides their clients with customized solutions that match industries, geographies and business priorities. To find out more, visit www.cielotalent.com.
Matt Alder [00:00:49]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Older. Welcome to episode 48 of the Recruiting Future podcast. This week I’m delighted to welcome back another returning guest. About this time last year I spoke to Neil Morrison, HRD for Penguin Random House. We talked about all things HR tech and also a new groundbreaking entry level recruitment initiative his team were running, which they were calling the Scheme. One year on and they’re running the Scheme again. I wanted to catch up with Neil to find out what they’d learned and how things had developed. There’s some absolutely fascinating stuff here. Enjoy listening.
Matt Alder [00:01:29]:
Hi Neil, welcome back to the podcast.
Neil Morrison [00:01:31]:
Thanks very much Matt. Good to be here.
Matt Alder [00:01:33]:
A pleasure to have you back. We last spoke, I think it was almost 12 months ago actually it was kind of roundabout Easter last year.
Matt Alder [00:01:41]:
Could you just introduce yourself to everyone.
Matt Alder [00:01:44]:
Who may not have listened to the podcast before or may not have, you know, come across you or read any of stuff?
Neil Morrison [00:01:50]:
Sure. So my name is Neil Morrison. I’m the Group HR Director for the UK and international companies at Penguin Random House. I’m also a non executive for the CIPD in the UK and write and blog and speak about HR and the world of work and various other bits and bobs.
Matt Alder [00:02:12]:
Now when we were talking last year we were sort of talking about HR and technology and various things like that, but at the end of the interview you were talking about the scheme, which at the time was your new entry level talent initiative. And really, you know, the reason for the conversation today is to sort of to find out a bit more about that and find out what you’ve done with it and what you’re doing this year. Could you just sort of recap and tell us what the scheme is, how it came about and how it went last year?
Neil Morrison [00:02:45]:
Sure. So the scheme is an entry level program that we have at Penguin Random House and it was devised to try and tackle three specific issues we had. One was about being inclusive, particularly around socio economic diversity in our organisation, opening our doors to more diverse candidate pools. The second was a real need to get marketing talent, I should say, into the organisation. So looking at our business increasingly being marketing led and an understanding that the way in which you market to consumers is very, very different and therefore we need to get different skill sets in. And thirdly, it was about being the largest trade publisher and having a standout program that really looked within the industry as something that other companies could look towards and aspire to. And so what we did last year was we set out to try and recruit four entry level graduate candidates into our organ. And we were assessing people effectively against core competencies for the job. So we removed any requirement for any formal education, we recruited any requirement for any demographic information. The first couple of rounds, all we knew about people were their email addresses and their answers to questions. We didn’t know anything else about them. We built the campaign entirely around social platforms, so the main site was built on Tumblr and we used our social channels in order to attract people and to try and create some sort of, I guess, noise around the program itself. And that led to us hiring four people who joined our business in September last year, two of which came from what I would say were quite traditional backgrounds. So two graduate entrants and two people who came from completely different backgrounds, all of whom performed equally well across all of our assessments.
Matt Alder [00:04:51]:
Very interesting. And what did you learn from doing that? Because there’s a huge amount of stuff there. There’s abandoning sort of the need for a degree for entry to the company, the fact that you didn’t know anything about the candidate’s backgrounds till later on in the process and obviously then sort of coming in and doing the job. What did you learn from that? How did it go?
Neil Morrison [00:05:18]:
Yeah, I mean, huge amounts is the simple answer. We learned so much. What did we learn? We learned that actually when you’re looking to recruit on potential, when you’re looking to recruit against role requirements, it’s a lot harder than putting in artificial characteristics such as much hath a 21 degree. It makes it harder for the resources, it makes it harder for the assessors. But actually we also found out you get a broader, better quality of candidate, you get a more diverse candidate pool and you recruit a different type of people. So, for example, one of the people that we recruited finished her A levels the day before she came to the final assessment process. Now, if we had the degree requirement, she would never have got through to that stage. But also actually a lot of the preconceptions that people had around 18 year olds and what their soft skills would be like, how they perform how they’d be able to navigate an organization such as our own were completely dispelled through the initial process. I guess the main thing that we learned was that people without formal higher education were as likely to perform as well as people with formal higher education. In other words, people without degrees were performing as well as people with degrees and people with degrees were performing as badly as people without. So, from the four, we had two who didn’t have a formal higher education background. And that’s what led us to make the decision earlier in 2016 to remove a requirement for degrees from all of our roles across the organisation.
Matt Alder [00:07:10]:
Now, that’s a sort of a very big move, particularly for, you know, your industry, the publishing industry. What’s the reaction to that been like?
Neil Morrison [00:07:19]:
So the response has been really positive. I think it’s been welcomed. I think there are a lot of people that have seen it as a really bold move towards inclusivity. I think we’ve been very clear all along that our doors are very much open to graduates as well. What we’re not saying is we don’t want to hear from graduates. What we’re saying is we want to hear from the best talent, from the most creative people, from the people with the most potential, regardless of what their background is. So we’re not going to put in place artificial barriers. The response has been very positive from the university sector as well, recognizing that university is the right path for some people, but not for everyone. And generally within the business, within Penguin Random House, it’s been incredibly well received as well, people seeing it as a positive step towards transforming publishing as an industry.
Matt Alder [00:08:17]:
So you’re now running the scheme for this year. So this the second time you’ve done it. What’s changed from last year? What have you learned? What are you doing differently? Or is it just exactly the same again?
Neil Morrison [00:08:32]:
So we are indeed running the scheme 16. The name the scheme came because we couldn’t think of anything better. The name the scheme 16 became because we couldn’t think of anything better and it was 2016. So we are creative geniuses ourselves. What’s changed this year is we’re now looking at editorial roles, which I think is really quite an interesting and progressive move. This is the heart of publishing, the people that edit and work with authors. And by going out and looking for new voices for new talent in those areas who don’t necessarily have a specific formal education, that is quite transformational for the publishing industry. We’re also looking at different social channels. So in order to attract those people, our campaign has been built around stories. One of the biggest places where young people are telling stories is on Snapchat. So we’ve been using Snapchat as a channel to engage with people, to talk about what life is really like here. We’ve handed over our Snapchat account to various different people within the organisation who’ve been given an insight into their days. And our assessment process is slightly different as well. I don’t want to tell you too much about that because our closing date for applications on the first stage is the 8th of April, so we’ve still got a little way to go before we actually get to that. But we’ve got some tricks up our sleeves to come on that too.
Matt Alder [00:10:05]:
Fantastic. I particularly like the Snapchat stuff. I was looking at it, I was looking at it last week. Just a kind of really authentic use of the platform and also just really interesting as well to see, you know, to see what someone’s day’s like working, you know, working in editorial, in publishing. Did you have kind of, have you had any help with the promotions? Is it something that you’ve done internally? Have you used sort of any external advisors or agencies or is it something you’ve done yourselves?
Neil Morrison [00:10:40]:
So the entire scheme, both in 2015 and 2016, has been run by the HR team. So everything from the design of the website, the coding of the website, the social campaigns has been run entirely by my team. And one of the things that’s been really interesting is finding out all those hidden skills that people have. The Snapchat actually came from a discussion with the successful candidates last year. When we were talking about it and being slightly old fashioned, a little bit out of touch, we kind of went, what do you think to Vine? And everyone went, yeah, not really. How about Periscope? Not so much. Okay, so what should we be using? And they were very, very clear. Snapchat was the place to be talking to people. So that’s why we’ve done it. So it’s been a new experiment for us. It’s been really exciting, really interesting. I think we’ve had a hugely positive level of engagement considering we’re quite new to this. The analytics aren’t as helpful as they are on, for example, Facebook or Twitter. So we would struggle with that a little bit. And of course the fact that it’s relatively temporary in terms of the presence that you give it on the channel. But at the times when we’ve had the live stories, they’ve been had really positive engagement.
Matt Alder [00:12:08]:
Yeah, I think it just seemed to me it was like a really, really kind of clever use of the medium. And it was obvious that you are, it was either being done by someone who really understands Snapchat or you were being advised by people who really understood Snapchat. So it kind of makes perfect sense that it was obviously the people who, you know, successfully navigated the scheme last year. So just to sort of Clarify with Scheme 16, is it actually a full time job that people get out of this or is it a placement? What’s the actual kind of end result?
Neil Morrison [00:12:44]:
Okay, so what we’re looking at is four people to join us in September 2016. They come into us initially on a 13 month contract, 13 months, fixed term contract. And within that period of time they’ll spend six months with two of our eight publishing divisions. And what we try and give to that is a diverse mixture. So you might spend six months in a very commercial division and then six months in a, in a more literary division, for example. But you come in, you do a real job, you get real experience, you get training, you get support, you get a manager, you get a mentor and a development program that’s tailored around you. Demonstrate that we’re good enough for those people to want to stay with us and work for us. But we also recognize that at the end of that period of time they might decide that we’re not the people that they want to go for. But very much it’s about attracting new talent. And so our view is that we desperately want the four people to stay with us.
Matt Alder [00:13:48]:
In terms of the future of entry level recruitment, do you think this is what it looks like? Do you think the old reliance on graduates and formal ways of recruiting graduates and even apprentices are out of date. Do you think this is the way that other companies should be moving forward?
Neil Morrison [00:14:09]:
I think there’s definitely a diversification of entry level options for young people, particularly in the uk, where we’ve seen increasing tuition fees, increasing costs of going into higher education. It’s only right that young people are looking to see what options are available to them, whether it’s apprenticeships, whether it’s universities, whether it’s going direct into the workforce. And I think organisations that are forward thinking will be understanding that if they can put a compelling offering on the table, there will be really talented young people who want to come straight into work. Why wouldn’t you? You know, one of the people last year was working out that during the period of time that she would have been in university, she would have earned something like £70,000. Meanwhile, the person that went to university will be in something like £40,000 worth of debt. You know, that will be right for some people, it won’t be right for other people. But I think there is an increasing opportunity to attract people at that 18, 19, 20 year olds who haven’t been to university. And if you can put the right development program in place for them in your organisation, then not only can you capture some really talented individuals, but you can also help them develop during that period of time, perhaps to the same level, if not beyond, than they would have been if they’d gone to university.
Matt Alder [00:15:39]:
So, final question, what advice would you have for other employers who are maybe thinking of doing something similar, having their own version of the scheme?
Neil Morrison [00:15:51]:
So my advice would be start by really trying to understand the requirements of a job. What is it that makes someone really stand out in role? And then look at how you recruit and assess to those requirements. Quite often when you talk to people and say, what is it that makes someone really successful? You know, it’s very, very rarely that they say, oh, it’s a degree or it’s having a BB or it’s having five GCSEs, A to C, they’ll talk about, you know, their creativity or their interpersonal skills or their commercial acumen or their understanding of consumer. These are all the characteristics that we’re looking for. And then trying to think about how you assess and source those. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is understanding that your sourcing techniques are going to have to be completely different. If you’re trying to get to audiences that you don’t currently recruit from, then you need to recruit in a different way. You can’t just do what you’ve always done and expect people to be there just waiting for you to come along. So that’s where we’ve used the social channels, for example. And the third piece, I think is really engaging people within the business and within your business to help you kind of define the program. Because quite often they will have contacts, they’ll know people, they’ll be related to, people have friends, family, whatever it is, who can help spread the word and having those internal ambassadors who, using their own social channels, who are talking about it on their own Twitter, on their own Facebook, are absolutely critical to spreading that message, attracting the people and then assessing them against those criteria.
Matt Alder [00:17:38]:
Neil, thank you very much for talking to me.
Neil Morrison [00:17:41]:
Thank you, Matt.
Matt Alder [00:17:42]:
My thanks to Neil Morrison. You can subscribe to this podcast on itunes and on Stitcher. You can find all the past episodes of the show@www.rfpodcast.com on that site. You can subscribe to the mailing list and also find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening.
Matt Alder [00:18:02]:
I’ll be back next week and I.
Matt Alder [00:18:04]:
Hope you’ll join me.
