It will come as a surprise to some that Enterprise Rent-A-Car is one of the UK’s top graduate recruiters. Ashley Hever, Talent Acquisition Manager for UK & Ireland, explains how the world’s largest car hire company is turning to digital and social channels to entice graduates into a sector that lacks obvious ‘wow’ factor. Every year, Enterprise Rent-A-Car has 750 management trainee positions to fill across the UK. Its challenge is how to attract a sufficiently large and diverse talent pool from which it can choose the best people for the jobs, people with the drive and entrepreneurial spirit to succeed within the organisation and who reflect the local communities in which Enterprise operates. The company has much to offer those graduates who do come on board, but how does it ensure that they consider Enterprise in the first place, particularly when there are so many other eager employers vying for their attention?
The thing that really sets Enterprise apart is its business model, which rewards hard work and, essentially, fast tracks bright, ambitious graduates to be able to run their own business in just two years. Recent research by the company has shown that when students apply for graduate training programmes and consider potential employers, their two most frequently mentioned considerations are the career prospects and training/development opportunities on offer. Enterprise scores highly on both fronts. The company recruits at the entry level, so that every management trainee works in a branch and learns the job from the ground up. It balances that sometimes less-than-glamorous starting point in the business with high levels of responsibility, good remuneration and the opportunity to make decisions.
The majority of more senior positions are then filled through internal promotion, by employees that have come through its management trainee programme, so the prospects for anyone joining the company are strong. Also, Enterprise lays out the road to the top for new recruits from day one. This is based on transparent metrics which are applied to every individual across the organisation, board members are assessed on the same criteria and measures as the company’s newest trainees. Ultimately, the real selling point is the chance to build a career rather than just have a job, with the potential for management trainees to, one day, progress to Vice President/General Manager. However, whilst the benefits offered by Enterprise, its unique culture and the scope for career progression it provides, are exactly what talented graduates want, the fact it’s a car hire company means many don’t even look at what’s on offer.
So the fundamental issue the company has faced is how to engage with young people in the first place, in a way that they want to be engaged, and to tell them about the opportunities available. Around a decade ago the company launched its Come Alive brand to build appreciation for the Enterprise proposition and support the important graduate recruitment process. Over time, and with feedback from graduates and recent joiners, Come Alive has evolved into a rich online experience designed to attract the best talent through engaging content and communication. Come Alive makes it easy for candidates to find out more about life at Enterprise, to gain direct access to the people recruiting for the business and to apply for a job. Profiles of Enterprise employees give recruits a real insight into what working for Enterprise is really like, while a special map feature enables candidates to locate their nearest recruiter and start a conversation. Come Alive has been enhanced more recently to support social channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Youtube, ensuring that its stays current.
Data gathered by Enterprise points to how successful the Come Alive online experience has been for the company and its graduate recruitment efforts. In the first six months of it being socially ‘enabled’, the company had already hired well over half of its graduate intake for the year. Enterprise has seen how good, relevant content can really add value, a single blog post by HR Director Donna Miller, on getting your first graduate job, resulted in 786 visits to the hub, and mobile engagement is definitely on the rise. Mobile visits to Come Alive in the past year increased by 185 percent compared to the same time in the previous year. So, for Enterprise online and social channels coupled with rich, relevant content have proved to be a powerful combination. They have helped it make Enterprise truly ‘come alive’ for would-be recruits and communicate its unique proposition in an accessible, graduate-friendly way.
