Project Types: Employment Market Research
Client: RBS
RBS was planning a 12-month high performance development programme aimed at Internationally-located postgraduate students. Ideally studying for a Masters degree in a stated subject, the target audience needed to have previous commercial experience and high ambitions for career development. There would be 12 places on the programme which would be run from several RBS offices throughout Europe, culminating in a senior management role commanding a high salary.
The project was at the design stage and they wanted to know how to determine likely interest levels in the programme – and in RBS – amongst the target student base, and also how best to reach those defined targets with information about the programme.
Our solution revolved around targeting identified postgraduate and also MBA students, studying at key identified universities and business schools around the world. Having identified the institutions and the courses, and established the profile of the students, we reached them directly via faculty heads, course tutors or careers advisers who provided the conduit for direct access.
We designed an online questionnaire in three sections – the first section focused on the student, their background, motivations, priorities and influencers; the second focused on their career to date and career planning activities and the final section focused on RBS and the planned programme.
Thus, not only were we able to secure valuable data on people whose profile reflected the desired candidate profile for the role in question, we were able to generate direct interest in the programme through providing an initial insight to it – and through offering an attractive financial incentive to anyone who completed the questionnaire, we were able to secure contact details and establish whether they would be interested in hearing more about the programme from RBS. 85% of respondents (c 400) indicated that they would.
Target candidates, virtually on the doorstep!