[00:04:49] Megs: Awesome. Thank you so much for your insights, Bo. And, yeah, without further ado, here's the episode.
And today I've got Nicola Thistleweig from Compass Group dialing in as our guest.
[00:04:59] Megs: Hi, Nicola. Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:05:02] Nicola: Hey, Megan. Thanks for having me.
[00:05:04] Megs: Yeah. Absolutely. So I'm really, really looking forward to delving into your journey with VideoMyJob and also sharing your strategy and wins with our listeners. So I'll just jump straight in there. Nicole, I'll get you to introduce yourself actually.
[00:05:17] Megs: So can you start by telling us about your role, and your team?
[00:05:22] Nicola: Absolutely. So, I couldn't actually fit my job title on when I was, typing it in, so I've got a long one. It's National Manager of Recruitment sourcing, and partnerships. And and what that means is that my team look after alternate career pathways into the business. So a grad program, apprenticeship programme, job ready programmes, work based traineeships, executive search function, external partnerships with education providers or job network providers, external skills academies, and also we look after our external facing brands, so our social media and career websites as well.
[00:05:58] Nicola: So big exciting role, with an awesome team.
[00:06:02] Megs: That sounds it it sounds great and sounds diverse. And and, yeah, I'm very excited to hear, everything your team your team have been doing. So how long have you been using VideoMyJob?
[00:06:14] Nicola: So we've been using VideoMyJob for just over 12 months. So I was really new to the to the business. We actually, we were really fortunate in that one of the senior leaders that joined the people team had used video my job in an in his previous company that he was with. So when he when he joined, one of the first things that he wants to do is raise a business case for video my job and get it get it implemented straight away. So this will will be rolling into our 2nd year, but I think we're on about month 13 or 14 of usage.
[00:06:49] Megs: And look, I've seen some of the really great content your team are producing across both your social media channels as well as your career site, which we will dive into shortly. But I'd love to know what was the status quo, before video my job. So what was your team doing before video my job was implemented?
[00:07:07] Nicola: Look. It sounds really archaic when I when what what I say is gonna sound really archaic. And now that I'm thinking about it, the steps that we took previous to video my job probably seem quite disjointed. So we relied very heavily on, I guess volunteer videos or volunteer pictures, volunteer collateral in any sense so that we could then pair that up with our careers website or on our job ads, on our leaflets and posters, and and, and YouTube as well. So we would, you know, we would maybe see something that was shared on an internal platform and then we'd reach out to the hiring manager to see if they have more content.
[00:07:46] Nicola: Did we have permission to use that content? Did they have anything else that we could use And then we'd have that raw content, whatever it may be. It would come back to us. How can we use this? How can we edit it in a way that achieves the goal that we wanna achieve with that?
[00:08:03] Nicola: And then where do we put it to have the most impact? What does that look like externally and internally facing? How can we celebrate what is drawn in the right way? And again achieve those aims that we want to with that particular piece of content. So as I say the the the more I think about it, the long the longer that process seems.
[00:08:24] Nicola: And we've been able to really eliminate that over the past 12 months.
[00:08:28] Megs: Wow. That does that does sound like many, many steps that you had to take to get content. And I can imagine trying to get that content as well. It would have been a massive uphill battle. So when you got VideoMyJob, when you knew that VideoMyJob was going to be implemented, Nicola, what were, like, 2 or 3 key things that you really wanted to improve or achieve using the platform knowing what you knew?
[00:08:52] Nicola: It's a great question and I think always in part of my role I'm cognizant to to be thinking about what's the employee journey. So what is it that we're doing that either improves our current employee journey or how can we give them the tools to understand what they can do to better their employee journey themselves. So for me it was really the elevation of our employee value proposition, how can we get the messaging out internally? And then as a flow on from that, how do we increase our brand's awareness externally? So, you know, I find myself saying every day that Compass is the largest brand that people have never heard of, because we have so many business or business names dependent on the sectors that we service.
[00:09:36] Nicola: So for me, it was increasing the the brand awareness of Compass Group Australia, but also, tailoring a brand awareness for the individual sectors. Is very different from what we do with Levi, our venues business. Is very different from what we do with Levi, our venues business. So it was making sure that, everything that we used VideoMyJob for was tailored to them, but also in with that main goal of elevating the brand.
[00:10:08] Megs: And it's interesting because I do hear that a fair bit from companies who have, you know, sort of sub brand sitting under them or they've got multiple brands with sitting within their company that, you know, that it's, yeah. They struggle to get their brand awareness out there and they struggle to, to really showcase their EVP. And Bo it's it's it's really great, yeah, to to hear that. Bodin terms of in terms of that's what you want to achieve, Nicola, can you talk us through, how you've achieved that or and and whether you've achieved that over your over the last 12 months?
[00:10:45] Nicola: So I think it's an ongoing process. So anything to do with EVP and brands is going to be never ending, and it's ever shifting and and and changing, and that's what's exciting about about this space that we work within. Right? So, what we've really done is is try to level up that EVP to to make it more visible as much as we can. So we think about our employee value proposition, it's to chart your own career, to do good feel good, and to, to create a workplace for everyone.
[00:11:15] Nicola: Now if we can't show our employees that already feel that, then how are our additional employees going to feel that and understand what's available to them? So if we think about chart your own career, so let's pick that one up, and a way a way to chart your own career is to move through the training programs that we have into a unit manager role or would be to recognise yourself that you really see yourself moving into that culinary field. What can we do to support you through an apprenticeship? So for us it was about collecting those employee stories that have successfully done things to chart their own career and have them talk about their own experiences so that our employees have somebody or have something tangible that they can see, but also have somebody that they can relate to, that they can see. Well, actually, that could be me because then it's their felt experience too, and always bear in mind what's in it for them.
[00:12:11] Nicola: So that's an ongoing thing and will continue to to be ongoing. You know people never start stop charting their careers. The employee life cycle can be as long or as short as as people feel. When it comes to brand, though, we've we we use some metrics to to track what that is. So I'll give you an example, Megan.
[00:12:30] Nicola: We have over 800,000 visitors to our careers website every month, which results in 20,000 minimum applicants per month. Bo a business this size that's pretty normal, but what we really wanted to do when we elevate the brand is make sure that we attract the right people for the right roles first time every time. So what we've really been able to do with the use of the right collateral and and Vidyo My Job being a part of that is make sure that that the job ads or the careers website really talks to what the real life role is. So if I think about a housekeeper on a remote mine site in the middle of the gold fields in Western Australia, They're working 14 days straight or maybe 1 week of days, 1 week of nights. They're working 12 hour days with an hour break in the middle.
[00:13:21] Nicola: What does that look like? So what does that actually look like? What is that job? How many rooms do they need to clean? What do they do in their spare time?
[00:13:29] Nicola: Do they have any recreational facilities on-site? What does working on that roster mean to them? And then we translate that into what does that mean for that brand? So that's ESS. What does it mean for that brand, and how do we use to attract the right people into those housekeeping roles so that that person knows exactly what they're walking into in that role?
[00:13:51] Nicola: And the receiving site know that they're getting somebody who completely understands what job they're going to be required to do after their training time. So in both senses, we've had great success. So the great success with the EVP is that, employees more and more are aware of where this company can take them, wherever it may be. And, externally, we are recruiting the the or we're attracting the right people more often now, in our applicant process. So we still have those volumes of 20,000 applicants per month.