Communicating your Employer Brand through Data & Design...

... And how a summer internship led to a full-time job in recruitment marketing.

It is uncommon for HR departments to bring recruiters and data scientists together; but at the IDB the sourcing team is embedded within the analytics team, which means there’s constant communication between recruiters who work to attract talent and data scientists who guide human capital decisions. A year ago, when I joined the Sourcing team for a summer internship, I was asked to design one-pagers for outreach purposes, and because of this close relationship they had with analytics, I had to do it relying on data, using infographics. This uncommon approach to recruitment marketing led to a beautiful end product which was praised by candidates and celebrated inside the organization. Here’s how it happened, and how you can replicate it with your team.  

The challenge:

I was given 8 weeks to design one-pagers which would quickly answer the most common questions asked by candidates. As a new intern I could look at the Bank with fresh eyes, while also getting access to the whole array of resources and specialists within the organization. In other words, my summer project was to identify questions, find the best answers, and communicate them in the most digestible way.   

Learn, ask, and draft. A three step process to success.

Stage 1, “Empathize”:

The first step was to meet with the team who was going to use these infographics, and understand what they needed. The typical flyer with pictures of employees or office spaces was out of the question. Instead, they were relying on numbers to tell the story. The goal was to design cheat-sheets of the Bank’s profile as an employer, therefore the end-product had to be clean and clear, with the least distractions possible.

2- “Define”:

After framing the approach, we jumped onto storytelling. Rudy, an experienced recruiter, brought up the questions that needed to be answered. At job fairs and through emails and calls, candidates most frequently asked him about: the work the Bank does, the requirements needed to apply, the benefits, and the corporate culture. Based on this insight we decided to divide the narrative into four flyers: Who′s the IDB? - Opportunities for Staff - Short Term Opportunities - Diversity and Inclusion.

3) “Ideate”:

At this point it was time to get down to business and actually produce something. But, how? I was an intern fresh out of university where I studied psychology and literature -no design skills or experience in branding whatsoever. I held on to methods I’d learned in poetry classes, where I was exposed to the economy of language and the power of carefully chosen words. Still, there was a steep learning curve to climb ahead, which happened in four phases:

• Sat down and studied the Bank’s identity manual, a 130-pages long document that taught me everything about attributes, color pallets, logo specifications… and all things related to our brand.
• Dove into the Bank’s internal HR website and mapped (as best and fast as I could, meaning: superficially) the topics that needed to be covered. Did you know you can spend countless hours in a single website and never finish reading it?
• Consulted with experts across all areas in our Human Resources department; from “benefits” to “contract modalities”. The key to success here was to approach everyone with a draft in hand, giving them a chance to scratch everything out and add their own flavors to the mix.
• Lastly, but most importantly, I had to figure out how to craft an A+ infographic. I first learned how to use Piktochart, and then researched what other companies where doing.  

4. “Prototype and Test”:

After all that fast-tracked learning and brainstorming sessions, the first official draft became a reality two weeks into the project. During the first feedback meeting with the team it was clear that what I had developed was just... a disaster. The sentences were so minimalistic that didn’t actually say anything, and the charts where just numbers and lines with no clear connections between them. We wrapped up, and I never slept again. Just kidding, but I did start working late at night, trying to improve the product as much as I could.

Fail:

*5 “Test; more”:

'The new strategy was to get more feedback, lots of it. I scheduled three more bi-weekly sessions with the team (four in total for the whole internship period) and also found time to meet with fellow summer interns, who could provide more fresh eyes to the designs.  

-6 “Iterate”: Going back to those poetry classes… one of the most meaningful lessons I took from them was the “workshop” methodology in the creative process. This meant that before arriving at a solid portfolio at the end of the semester, we all stood up four times in front of the whole class to read our poems and had everyone criticize our work. That’s how we all developed our best pieces. This “collective feedback” process is what I tried to replicate during my internship: draft, break it, go and fix it, come back with another draft. And it turned out to be a true success. 

Results:

• Supported the foundation of the Sourcing role: The development of these infographics was one of the key pillars stated in the Sourcing team’s institutional strategy. We can cross that item out now :)
• Created a long-term, reusable, and sustainable tool for multiple outreach purposes: These one-pagers are currently being used at job fairs year round, they are sent to candidates before information sessions, and they are flying with employees who travel around the world for meetings or conferences. If they need to be edited, it’s as easy as opening the original file and making the right changes. We have this power and don’t need to contact any external designers to make the edits.
• Integrated the Bank’s Employer Value Proposition: There was immense value in bringing together so many faces of our EVP, integrating different arms of our department and condensing so much information into 4 pages. And because stakeholders were included in the design from the very beginning, everyone now sees the product as their own. 
• Bridged communication between HR and the External Communications Department, laying the grounds for opportunities to do more business together.

And on a personal note...

• Landed a full time job doing recruitment marketing for the Bank, where I’ve had more opportunities to play a creative role in recruitment products. I’ve worked, for example, in the redesign of our careers website (which hadn’t been revamped in six years), the production of recruitment videos, the design of banners for job fairs, the redesign of our job descriptions, and my favorite, strategizing the first batch of paid ads campaigns on LinkedIn.

In spirit of knowledge & experience sharing, I hope to write about all these other projects soon and keep the ball rolling. If you have any questions or opinions about this project, please comment below... let’s talk!

Oh, and before I go, here’s an example of 1 of the 4 infographics. Enjoy!