Introduction
The L’Oreal Group is the world’s largest cosmetics and beauty company, with an annual turnover of €20.3 billion, a presence in 130 countries, 27 global brands, 68,900 employees and 19 Research & Innovation centres with brands such as Garnier, Maybelline New York and the Body Shop. They widely use social recruitment in various countries worldwide (such as India and the Philippines), however it is especially prominent in the United Kingdom and the United States.
The L’Oreal Strategy
L’Oreal have a uniform branding on all the websites for the countries in which they operate. The jobs section of each website lists available positions in that country and only a few link to the relevant social networks. The UK LOreal.Jobs website links to the L’Oreal Talent Recruitment Facebook page, the L’Oreal LinkedIn page, the L’Oreal Luxe TalenTube Facebook page and the @LOrealCareers Twitter feed.
The L’Oreal US jobs website has an interesting and innovative way of linking to the relevant social media platforms. The Facebook page can be found via facebook.lorealusa.jobs, the Twitter @LOrealUSACorp feed via twitter.lorealusa.jobs, the LinkedIn page via linkedin.lorealusa.jobs and the YouTube channel is found at youtube.lorealusa.jobs (all these will be explored in more detail later, apart from the Twitter feed). The uniform branding of the various careers websites give an overall professional look to the careers side of L’Oreal, and the linking to the social platforms helps possible applicants find what they need with ease.
The L’Oreal Talent Recruitment Facebook page (facebook.com/LOrealTalentRecruitment) is the worldwide Facebook page for all L’Oreal careers and jobs (with other pages existing for certain countries – such as India), and uses the Work4Labs application for their ‘Work for L’Oreal’ tab. The Twitter tab is linked to the @LorealCareers Twitter feed, however the other tabs are not used often, and the page does not regularly post content. It does, however, have over 30,000 likes, so the jobs tab must be working well in attracting talent.
There are two other ‘specialist’ Facebook pages for the UK and USA – the UK graduate jobs and internships page (facebook.com/LorealGradJobsUKI), and the USA careers page (facebook.com/LOrealUSACareers).
The L’Oreal Grad Jobs UKI page, with a cover photo of some of its past employees, has no additional tabs (apart from the standard photos, map and likes), however it posts regularly with photos, job postings and links. With over 900 likes, the page is quite active, and does get comments, likes and shares on its content – but the lack of likes and activity can be explained by how specialist it is.
The L’Oreal Careers in the US page, however, is much more popular (with almost 7,000 likes), but does not post any content. It does, however, have a working ‘Jobs’ tab which lists current openings, as well as tabs explaining the ideas and missions of working for L’Oreal in the US. The cover photo is interesting, and the additional tabs are all branded in a similar fashion – a great way to run a page, apart from the lack of content!
L’Oreal have careers based Twitter accounts for the UK (@LOrealGradJobs) with over 1,100 followers, and a general account (@LOrealCareers) with almost 3,500 followers.
The L’Oreal Careers Twitter feed (@LOrealCareers) holds around 3,500 followers, and regularly posts jobs (all using the hashtag #jobs) as well as some news articles about the company (which receive some ‘retweets’ and ‘favourites’).
The L’Oreal (graduate jobs) UK Twitter feed (@LOrealGradJobs) has over 1,100 followers, and posts daily about campus visits and other such news. They also reply to other users’ tweets and run a very ‘human’ account. The normal tweets rarely get retweeted, but the contest tweets can have over one fifth of the followers retweeting them – a very popular way to attract talent, and increase the base that read job openings.
There are other accounts, but these are the two main feeds for the UK and USA careers side of L’Oreal.
L’Oreal have one LinkedIn company page – with a branded ‘Careers’ tab to match. The tab holds an introduction to working for L’Oreal, a YouTube (which can be seen below), plus testimonials from past employees and links to the L’Oreal Talent Recruitment Facebook page and @LOrealCareers Twitter feed, and relevant websites.
YouTube
L’Oreal UK Careers has a branded YouTube channel (/LorealUKCareers) with only 5 videos and 5 subscribers but over 2000 video views. It does have a good quality graphic background, and links to corresponding websites, but it is the ‘Trainee’ set of videos which have the most views. YouTube is a great tool for social recruitment, and with the last video uploaded in May (and not very high quality – mainly filmed on a mobile phone), L’Oreal UK could spend a bit of time creating some simple videos to really promote working for the company.
L’Oreal USA have a Careers channel (lorealusacareers) – named L’Oreal USA Corporate, with only 30+ subscribers, but almost 10,000 video views. There is no branding and only 10 videos (uploaded over a 2 year period). The videos are high quality, but hold no description or tags – so will never be found by future employees unless they find the channel.
L’Oreal has a great resource here, but have not used it to its full potential (and they should, because it’s worth it!) – even short 30 second high quality clips can really boost a recruitment process.
Results
There are two case studies surrounding L’Oreal’s use of social recruiting – one from Facebook (courtesy of Work4Labs), and one from LinkedIn.
L’Oreal use the Work4Labs tab on their L’Oreal Talent Recruitment Facebook page (shown above). The case study surrounds an internship posted on their L’Oreal Talent Recruitment Facebook page using the Work for Us app, which allowed fans and employees to share the posting via their networks. Using the app, and the Work4Labs’ AdvertHiring platform (to create advertisements linking to the job posting), the following results were reached:
- The internship’s ad campaign had an “optimised” performance and return on investment – generating 5.88 million impressions with 4,167 clicks (a 0.071% click through rate (CTR). The click through rate was much higher than the average CTR of Facebook ads (which is roughly 0.02%).
- This led to L’Oreal receiving 153 applicants (a 3.67% conversion) – with almost all of them being pre-qualified due to the specific targeting options (education, experience) that L’Oreal chose for the ads.
- The campaign had an “immediate and high quality turnaround” with applicants viewing the job and submitting resumes minutes after it went live.
- L’Oreal received 17 qualified resumes within the first 12 hours of the campaign – a huge difference to the limited success from traditional methods.
As these results (courtesy of Work4Labs) show, Facebook has been a success for social recruitment for L’Oreal.
L’Oreal used LinkedIn to solve 3 new challenges in their social recruiting process. The company recruit 6,000 new managers a year (including internships), using all the regular techniques, but wanted to solve these challenges (and used LinkedIn to do so):
- sourcing difficult-to-hire candidates
- reaching passive candidates
- online reputation
The company set up a ‘Careers’ tab on their company page (as discussed above) and “polished” individual recruiter profiles. Using their current network – with 15,000 L’Oreal mangers and employees on the site – to find passive talent, the company had really fit the LinkedIn referral slogan of “the best employees refer the best candidates”.
Some results from this included:
- Oskar Isenberg Lima, Luxe, HQ Paris said he has “sourced around 90 top profile candidates in less than five months”, simply using LinkedIn.
- By using LinkedIn, a Body Shop UK (a sub-section of L’Oreal) recruiter saved £20,000 with a single license.
- L’Oreal Australia saved around 20,000 Australian dollars in recruitment fees on a single hire.
As these results (from LinkedIn) show – LinkedIn was also successful in helping L’Oreal socially recruit (and in cutting costs).
Takeaways and Conclusions
L’Oreal actively use social media for their recruitment, and have results to match. Their Facebook pages are well branded, however could do with more content, whereas their Twitter feeds are actively updated with jobs and news. Their YouTube accounts could be used more, whereas their LinkedIn page (and Careers tab) is just right – and may fit better with the rest of their pages once they receive the new design. The two case studies show that L’Oreal is actively using social networks for recruiting and it is successful – however it should never replace the more traditional methods, as you never know where the perfect candidate could apply from.
For more great examples, see How a Cosmetics Company Use Facebook and Social Media to Recruit [Case Study].
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