Being "quirky", "original" and having fun is the key to Tesco attracting graduates, according to its graduate resourcing manager for commercial & marketing. 

Vicki Spindler told a London Region meeting of the Recruitment Society earlier this week, attended by Recruiter, that one of the reasons Tesco missed out on graduate talent was because “we can sometimes be seen as a cold and corporate employer”.

“Fun and creativity is a way to differentiate ourselves as an employer,” she said, adding that “feedback from students is that they are bored with the conventional.” 

She went on to outline two on-campus initiatives she had introduced at Tesco, which she said introduced both the elements of fun and doing things differently. 

• A competition similar to TV show The Apprentice, with £100 of Tesco gift vouchers to the winner. Of the 50 participants, 49 had applied to a Tesco graduate programme.
• Students were asked to pick a plastic windmill from a gazebo-covered sandpit. There was a code on the back of each windmill, and the winner won Tesco gift cards. Over two days, 381 students entered the competition. “This was a great way to have a conversation with people at an early stage,” said Spindler.
  
  

She suggested that both initiatives were successful because they were “original and quirky” as opposed to “corporate and cold”. Last month recruiter.co.uk reported the comments of a counterpart of Spindler in Tesco’s Telecoms/Tesco Mobile business that CVs are ‘boring', and he favours a ‘3D CV’ approach.

Spindler said that it was vital that Tesco used such approaches to engage with students before their final year, and ideally in their first year. She said that by focusing on careers fairs and presentations in final year Milkrounds, the company had been missing out.

She cited the 'High Flyers Report 2013' that showed that 70% of graduates make a decision on their future career before their final year, and that only 11% consider career fairs to be a real insight into employers. As a retailer, she said, Tesco also started off at a disadvantage because only 5.6% expressed an interest in a career in the sector.

A report out today from the Higher Education Careers Services Unit demonstrates the importance of students being aware of where they might work in the country to do a particular job. Says deputy director of research Charlie Ball: “Not all jobs are found equally spread across all parts of the UK, and students who aspire to work in particular regions need to work closely with well-connected local careers services to ensure that they don't have unrealistic expectation of the kind of work that is available locally.”

• Click for more graduate recruitment news from recruiter.co.uk, and see the new April edition of Recruiter magazine, which includes an interview with professional service firm PwC’s head of student recruitment (see p7) and a feature on sourcing the best entry-level talent (p32).