Universum held the Universum Awards last Thursday, March 24th, at The Montague on the Gardens in London. The sponsor of the event was Graduate Promotions.

We were proud to invite a number of companies to UK’s number one event for employer branding inspiration, knowledge sharing and recognition of the UK’s Ideal Employers. The Universum Awards was a chance for people to inspire themselves in their employer branding work and network with other professionals and members of university career services. More importantly, it was the time of year to celebrate those companies with the strongest and most sophisticated employer brands.

The afternoon began with thought provoking seminars with speakers from the University of Liverpool, Barclays Wealth and the British Army. In the evening, the awards ceremony and dinner were a great opportunity to celebrate the employer branding success of this year’s most attractive employers, as voted for in the Universum Student Survey 2011.

Below are the employers that are perceived by the students as best in industry and ideal.

Best in Industry
PwC – Auditing & Accounting                       
HSBC – Banking                                                 
L’Oréal – FMCG                                                   
Accenture – Management Consulting                   
Google – Software & Computer Services  

Ideal Employers
Business & Commerce      
1. Apple
2. Google
3. HSBC

Highest Climber
RBS - Business & Commerce  

Ideal Employers
Engineering & IT 
1. Google
2. Microsoft
3. Apple

Highest Climber
Citi – Engineering & IT

Universum Awards UK 2011  – Image Gallery

By Michelle Boyde

Last week I asked the global head of employer branding for one of the world’s most prestigious employers what would be exciting in 2011 and what would be a challenge for those working in EB in 2011. Her answer to both was keeping up with the pace of social and mobile media including phones and iPads.

This week Adidas, the sports firm, was the first employer to launch a recruitment app for the iPhone – over 7,000 applicants downloaded it.

Richard Branson plans to launch a digital magazine specifically for Apple’s iPad called The Project. And on 3rd February Rupert Murdoch and News Corp ploughed ahead launching its new iPad newspaper, The Daily.

When Murdoch invests $30m into a project and Branson is doing the same its time to pay attention. Apple is already working on the new version of the iPad, due to debut in the next few months. Tablets are here to stay and there is an opportunity for the most fast-moving employers to build their brands in this channel before the masses.

Do you have an iPhone app yet? Can your potential employees apply through their tablets? How do your ads look?

By Michelle Boyde

Nokia is in a state of crisis.  And for anyone who didn’t know, new CEO Stephen Elop has shouted it loud and clear. In his words, Nokia is on “burning platform”.

Its share of the handset market has dropped from 36.4 per cent in 2009 to 28.9 per cent in 2010. Furthermore, its share of smartphones has dropped from 46.9 per cent in 2009 to 37.6 per cent in 2010.

Nokia represents the disaster looming in the wings if you let your employer brand slip. In 2008 they were ranked 12th by IT students in the UK, now they are 14th. Two years ago Nokia was the most popular employer for Finnish IT students – now they are just the runner up. And over in the US, their rank for IT students has fallen from 47th to 55th from 2008 to 2010. It appears to be a slippery slope – never mind a burning platform.

Their two biggest competitors, Apple and Google, have stronger employer brands – they also have a higher market share of the smartphone market.

It’s a vicious circle: if you don’t offer the most innovative products top talent does not want to work for you. If you cannot hire top talent, you cannot stay ahead of the game to produce the most innovative products.

Nokia has a challenge ahead.

By Michelle Boyde

A picture is worth a  thousand words – so the cliché tells us. But are we ready to adopt this philosophy when it comes to the CV. Graduates sending video CVs rather than the tried and tested wordy CV is a growing topic of conversation.

University career advisory services are being approached by companies who can help their students to produce a professional video. The resounding reply from graduate recruiters is they don’t have the resources to look at videos. Equally, it could be a discrimination minefield. A candidate can be judged on experience, qualification and skills alone on paper, but on video all our personal characteristics are laid bare.

But it can be good. If you need someone who is personable, speaks confidently and sounds trustworthy – what better way to judge this without an interview? For candidates who want to impress and make a spontaneous application, it can be unique way to stand out.

I am confident this will be a topic of conversation in 2011. Right now it might not be a channel for graduate recruitment, but times do change. Very few people would dream of posting a paper CV these days – everything is done by email now. So who is to say that eventually the video will not be the application tool of choice?

By Michelle Boyde

Do you offer your employees a bonus for referring a friend or acquaintance for an open position? You probably do. Many companies offer these incentives to find people that match their culture. Human beings like and trust what they know.

This is also true of young graduate talent: 29 per cent of UK students use friends and family for information about employers. This trend is prevalent throughout the world: 25 per in Germany, 28 per cent in the US and 27 per cent in Brazil. They may not know you – the employer – but they are ready to believe the experiences of the people they do know. But, for a generation of Facebook users, who “you know” has shifted; they certainly use the word ‘friend’ more loosely than their parents did.

Furthermore, 78% of internet users trust peer recommendations.

If you are not yet listening to the chatter in social networks, then you really should be. It’s an ideal way of seeing yourself through the eyes of talent.

Your employer brand is global and just like the game Chinese Whispers, everyone who comes into contact with it tells it in their own way – do you know what they are saying?

By Michelle Boyde

If your head is still firmly in the sand, it’s time to pull it out. Competition to hire the best people is stronger than ever. Whatever the unemployment figures tell us, getting those top 5 per cent of talented young things to sign on your dotted line is getting harder still. Just because you can fill your positions today does not mean you always will.

Today Skype announced it plans to hire 400 new employees, almost doubling its headcount.  CEO, Mr Bates, explains that Skype’s weakness is a shortage of product engineers capable of pushing out new products. Their lack of revenue growth is directly related to their lack of talented people.

If you weren’t convinced that employer branding has a direct affect on the bottom line, keep an eye on Skype. If he can find those 400 people, with exactly the right skills, the correct experience and of course cultural fit and then get them to work for Skype, we might see something exciting happening. That’s tough anyway, but even tougher when competing against Google and lets know forget the new kid on the block: Facebook.

By Michelle Boyde

You always need to be a little bit sceptical about CSR and what it really means. It’s a buzz word, one to take care with. This week Credit Suisse, the Swiss investment bank, announced it is forcing hundreds of US managing directors to give 2.5 per cent of their 2010 bonuses to charity.

Donating to charity is always a good thing – as long as the people who need help receive it.  But we know CSR is important to young people: students seek this in an employer – 19 per cent in the US and UK and 30 per cent in Switzerland (source: Universum Student Surveys).

When something appears to be forced, you have to question how this will affect the employer brand. Would it have been better to not have handed over such large bonuses in the first place and made a sizeable donation to charity alongside?

And are we really over scrutinising the banks? I am confident we are not.  Will students see this as an attempt to soften public perception or a genuine charitable activity?

By Michelle Boyde

Love it or hate it, possibly the marmite of the social media world, Twitter has been making an impression recently. Stephen Fry and his mundane daily activities aside, twitter has the potential to make you look very clever.

Were you stuck across Europe, waiting for Heathrow to clear the snow – I certainly was. But my frustration at not been able to get home was diluted by the constant Twitter updates from @HeathrowAirport and later @Gatwick_Airport. The information was useful and quicker than anything the airlines or airport staff were supplying.  Aside from feeling slightly smug that I knew more than my fellow passengers, I was impressed by the lack of excuses and the timely flow of real information.

KLM have been cleverer still: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqHWAE8GDEk. By monitoring Twitter feeds of passengers waiting to board their flights, they quickly researched them through social media to buy them a small gift suited to their interests. They then tracked them down in the airport to present the gift resulting in a happy passenger and more tweets: 100,000 impressions about how much they enjoyed flying with KLM.

This was also caught on camera resulting in the above YouTube video – more social media still – very clever indeed. Doesn’t it make you want to work for a company like this?

UK students are currently voting for their Ideal Employers, those they would most like to work for. Uiversum’s 2011 Ideal Employer rankings are due to be released on March 24th at the 2011 Universum Awards.

When: Thursday 24th March 2011, 3pm-10pm
Where: The Montague on the Gardens Hotel, London

As well as the awards and dinner, Universum presents three seminars to inspire you in your employer branding activities:

Future Shock! Generations at Work and the Challenges of Managing a Multigenerational Workforce
Paul Redmond, Head of Careers and Employability, University of Liverpool

Building Stakeholder Engagement to Support your Employer Brand – A Facilitated Discussion
Helen Bostock, Director, Global Head Graduate & Embark Resourcing & Development, Barclays Wealth

Conflict, Scrutiny and Opportunity: Attracting the Very Best to the British Army
Colin Cook, Marketing Director, Army Recruiting, British Army

Please contact Michelle Boyde, michelle.boyde@universumeurope.com to book your place.

By Michelle Boyde

The FT reports today that the gender pay gap has fallen to a record low, from 12.2 per cent to 10.2 per cent, according to data from the Office for National Statistics.

In the 2010 UK Student Survey, Universum asked respondents what criteria they classed as diversity in relation to the work place. Ethnicity was the number one dimension of diversity (59 per cent), followed by gender (41 per cent). On closer inspection, 46 per cent of female students believe it’s a factor of diversity, but only 36 per cent of men.

But this rather begs the question: do the other 54 per cent of women and 64 per cent of men not see gender as a matter of diversity in the work place?

Companies need diversity of all types to be innovative and leaders in their field. And, creating an EVP which is true and transparent which appeals to both genders is a challenge for many employers. But finding the skills you need in a diverse group of people is critical and only a strategically planned employer brand can deliver this in the long term.

We know there should be more women in senior positions and they certainly should be earning equal to their male peers. The 41 per cent of students who don’t count gender as a matter of diversity, is this because they simply assume gender should no longer be an issue, or may Gen Y continue to proliferate the gender imbalance in the work place?