Aegon: recruitment marketing helps you to find passive candidates
Published on 14-01-2020
Who is Nienke Luidinga?
I have been working at Aegon since 2014. Two years ago I switched from the Online Marketing department to HR. Here, I’m responsible for the careersite and marketing campaigns with the aim of positioning Aegon as an attractive employer and recruiting the right candidates.
How did you determine the Employee Value Proposition (EVP)?
We’ve researched our culture: what binds and moves us? In addition, we specifically asked about personal motives and asked the question: “why is it fun and less fun to work here?” This has provided a transparent and authentic picture of who we are and what we stand for as an employer. You get a lot of freedom here to develop yourself and to realise your own ideas. But you yourself will have to open your mouth to arrange it. At Aegon we work every day to enable our customers to make conscious financial choices for now, tomorrow and later. Our Employee Value Proposition is therefore “Empowering Futures”.
The recruitment target groups that I focus on as a Recruitment Marketeer are IT, Data Science and Risk & Finance professionals. We’ve developed Target Value Propositions (TVPs) for these different groups. The interests and needs of an actuary are different from those of an IT Professional. For example, an actuary is looking for information about development opportunities and the challenges that Aegon faces, and an IT Professional wants to know how we work at Aegon on smart innovations and what a job looks like. It’s therefore important to differentiate between content and the media channels that you use to reach them. The TVPs help with this.
What does your work as a Recruitment Marketeer look like?
Close collaboration with the recruitment team is extremely important to me. As a Marketer I help them find the right people. We do this using available market data and a clear segmentation of the target groups. To get to know the recruitment target group even better, we map out the Candidate Journey. During a brainstorming session with, among others, the recruiter, the hiring manager and people from the target group, we investigate:
- which emotions play a role before someone starts looking for a new job;
- what information someone needs;
- which media channels someone uses and when;
- for what reason someone decides to apply.
Based on this, we are able to develop relevant content for recruitment campaigns. One of our current campaigns is the “Build the Future” campaign for IT Professionals. To give a good view behind the scenes of the organisation we share stories about the great innovations that we are working on within Aegon and we present dilemmas to our IT colleagues, where they have to choose between two options. See an example of this in the video below:
In addition to the campaigns, I am also working on the further development of the career website. At Aegon we have our own Customer Experience Center. This is a lab, consisting of an observation room and a research room, in which we conduct research into the user-friendliness of our apps, the website and communication with customers. If there are adjustments for the application form, for example, we first test it in the Customer Experience Center to see if what we came up with is appreciated by the candidate.
How do you ensure that talent knows how to find Aegon?
Social media, Indeed, CompanyMatch and Careerguide are, in addition to LinkedIn, important acquisition channels for visibility.
There is a lot to be gained if you are easy to find on Google. Preferably on the first page and not in the “cemetery” of Google that most people don’t visit anyway. Relevant content is an important part to improve our position in Google. With content marketing, it’s important that you work with a content calendar, so that you know exactly when which piece of content goes live and on which channel. In addition to content for campaigns, we also write more general content about working at Aegon. This can be about The International Week of Happiness at Work to Coming Out Day. With this content we provide an authentic look behind the scenes at Aegon.
Another important way to improve the ranking on Google is the technology behind our website. We had an SEO expert do an audit and several points for improvement emerged from this. For example the loading speed of the website and the use of meta tags. I manage the careersite, so I can implement improvements quickly. Technical improvement points I discuss with the development team. We now see a strong increase in organic traffic to the website and we are happy with that.
How do you measure the recruitment marketing results?
As a Marketer I am used to basing my decisions on data. Google Analytics is my “place to be”! There I keep an eye on the impactful acquisition channels and the behaviour of visitors to our website. We monitor the effect of our efforts by, among other things, looking at:
- number of (unique) visitors to our careersite;
- how much time someone spends on the website;
- conversion rates from site visit to application;
- reputation score “willingness to work for Aegon”, what does the market say about working in the sector and specifically at Aegon?
It is our ambition to work more and more data-driven at HR and thus improve the candidate and employee experience.
What makes working for Aegon so special?
When I look at the many conversations I’ve had with colleagues, both the freedom for entrepreneurship and the space for personal development, and our friendly culture are mentioned frequently. For example, we recently said goodbye to a colleague who retired after 44 years and received a well-deserved applause from all his colleagues.
In addition, I also like Aegon’s international character! Aegon is active in more than 20 countries and as a result, I have a lot of calls with colleagues from other Aegon countries, or I visit them. For example, I went to the Digital Marketing Academy with my colleagues in Madrid and Budapest to share knowledge. I really enjoy working with different people and different cultures. This is also my biggest challenge. Because we share one global careersite and work via the same system, we have to reach consensus on priorities and optimisations.
What can a candidate expect when applying for a job at Aegon?
You start with an online assessment followed by two interviews and a panel discussion. The interviews focus on the content of the position. In the panel discussion you talk with two random Aegon employees who have nothing to do with the vacancy. They examine if you and Aegon match with each other. For example, they want to know how you put customers first, whether you bear your responsibilities and if you are agile. And how you collaborate with colleagues. The panel discussion requires an additional investment from Aegon and the candidate, but it provides an important contribution to the assessment of the Culture Fit.
Why does culture fit play such an important role in recruiting talent?
In addition to the fact that candidates must possess professional and innovative knowledge, it is very important to us that they match with Aegon. On our career page we offer the possibility to see if Aegon matches with you. You want to prevent a mismatch. If a candidate leaves too soon because they don’t fit well with Aegon, everybody loses. During the panel discussion, we test whether there is a Culture Fit together with the candidate, so that we ultimately have the right people in the right place.