Every second visitor clicks on Apply — Evonik revolutionizes digital trainee recruiting

More than four hundred trainees join Evonik and partner companies every year. With a wide range of apprenticeships and dual courses of study — from chemical technicians to electronics technicians — from a total of over 1,500 young professionals at 15 locations, Evonik is one of Germany's largest trainers. In order to retain young talent, all trainees willing and able to perform receive a commitment to work. At the same time, however, it was a challenge for the company to find the right career starters. Especially at a time when competition is fierce and it is becoming increasingly difficult to attract the attention of young professionals.

With the JobShop by talentsconnect and the direct-to-talent strategy successfully addresses career starters, because Evonik uses the JobShop as a career site for recruiting trainees. The goal is clear: to get young students excited about training at Evonik. But how can this highly competitive target group be reached in the best possible way?

Gen Z is one of the true digital natives and is very familiar with online. Evonik therefore needed a career page that was arranged intuitively. It should provide students with comprehensive information on career orientation and make it easy for them to apply.

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‍Result: Increase in all relevant KPIs

With the JobShop, Evonik has succeeded in increasing all relevant key figures and generating significantly more applications in a very short period of time. With a conversion rate of 48%, just under every second visitor to the career page clicks on Apply.

Challenge

The COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of digital platforms such as Snapchat, Twitch and Instagram have made it increasingly difficult for Evonik to reach potential trainees via traditional channels such as job fairs and events. The company was under pressure to quickly digitize the trainee approach.

Analysis

An analysis of the current career page and the applicant management system showed: A high-performance approach to career starters could not be implemented with the existing career page, because the career page had various deficiencies that made it difficult to find suitable candidates. On the one hand, there was a lack of target group-specific content that took into account the individual needs and requirements of applicants and addressed them in a targeted manner. On the other hand, there was no option for data analysis that would have enabled the company to measure and optimize the performance of the career site and the success of its recruiting measures.

Solution

With the JobShop, Evonik operates a lean and performance-oriented career platform that offers a variety of opportunities for students and applicants. The JobShop not only functions as a new career page, but also as a conversion-optimized landing page for training campaigns, which enables data-based recruiting. With the help of data analyses, Evonik can measure and optimize the effectiveness of recruiting campaigns, which leads to greater efficiency and better results.

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More benefits at a glance

• attractive and target group-specific job offers with pictures, texts and videos
• easy integration of video testimonials that provide an authentic look behind the scenes
• Presentation of all locations that can present themselves independently
• easy integration of the career page into social media communication

In addition to addressing the actual target group, the students, Evonik also takes into account other areas of influence, such as parents. For this purpose, the JobShop offers its own Parent area, which answers parents' questions and concerns. Evonik also organizes special events for parents to give them the opportunity to obtain comprehensive information about career opportunities at Evonik and to get a personal impression of the working conditions.

Matching & Similar jobs

The youngest target group is still at the beginning of their working life and therefore needs more information than experienced professionals. The JobShop offers Evonik interactive modules, such as videos, suggestions for similar jobs, or our “matching questionnaire.” In this way, job advertisements can be perfectly adapted to the talent they are looking for and the content can be placed where it is most important for students: directly on the job offer.

By using the matching questionnaire in the JobShop, Evonik provides interested talent with targeted support in their job search — and that pays off: Evonik's data shows that the probability of applying is twice as high as people who start a classic user journey via the landing page on the career page.

With the “Similar Jobs” content module, Evonik can also guide potential trainees through various job offers. With suggested similar jobs on a job offer, the company makes it easier for young talents to find jobs and sorts potential applicants to consider further suitable jobs at Evonik. The module is having an effect: 77% of all users who clicked on similar jobs also clicked on the apply button. This is shown by Evonik's JobShop data for the period January to December 2022.

Conclusion

Evonik knows how to approach trainees. With the JobShop, they have the perfect career page solution to address their target group in an attractive and goal-oriented manner. The conversion rate of 48% when clicking Apply shows how important it is to know the digital applicant behavior of the youngest career entrants in order to make the applicant journey as attractive as possible for this target group.

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“We're finally reaching students the way they expect: visually appealing, entertaining and to the point. And almost 100 chats at our exclusive, digital training fair confirm this.”

Matthias Kleff
Head of Global Recruitment Marketing

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Would you like to find out more about the JobShop? Book a demo or find out more about approaching applicants digitally in the Talentsconnect Academy.

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