How MBDA created a complete, personalised, online onboarding journey that’s engaging for both experienced and early career hires
About the Customer
MBDA
Creating a complete, personalised, online onboarding journey that’s engaging for both experienced and early career hires.
Inspire & Nurture, underpinned by MBDA’s Onboarding Portal.
Strengthened candidate experience during onboarding with high engagement and strong feedback from candidates and hiring managers.
virtual events with an average Net Promoter Score of 90 (“World Class!”)
registration for the Onboarding portal
of Early Careers candidates say that the portal is easy to use
The Challenge
In a time of skills shortages in core STEM specialisms and fierce competition from other employers, candidate experience during the onboarding stage is a key priority. How can you ensure that candidates feel supported and begin to align themselves to the brand values, providing a tailored experience when operating at scale? That was the challenge MBDA faced.
They understood the clear correlation between providing a great experience during the onboarding journey and the number of engaged hires who turned up on day one. They also understood that different audiences potentially have very different needs as they move through the process, and wanted to adopt a solution that would retain a strong element of personalisation in the candidate experience, whether candidates were fresh grads or niche hires.
MBDA also wanted to be able to measure quantitative and qualitative candidate sentiment and capture a dataset that could be used to review and refresh their offering on an ongoing basis.
Brand perceptions
As a defence organisation, MBDA can fall prey to stereotypes about their culture and the type of candidates who will succeed in hiring processes. MBDA is making conscious efforts to tackle these misconceptions throughout their attraction and hiring journeys.
Support & preparation
It was important that, whatever their background or experience, all candidates were empowered to thrive in selection and leave the process with a consistent, positive view of MBDA’s brand values and a better understanding of what is a complex matrix organisation.
Engagement
Security restrictions imposed by the MOD mean all candidates must undergo vetting. This both limits the candidate pool (nationality), but also increases the time to hire significantly. This added time increases the risk of losing candidates in-process through lack of engagement, as recruiters do not have the resource to interact with all candidates as often as they would like.
Our Solution
The Meet & Engage technology used by MBDA includes live virtual recruiting events coupled with a fully-branded, social network style nurture journey.
Meet & Engage, Unseen’s candidate experience and onboarding platform, underpins MBDA’s Onboarding Portal so candidates can access a complete, personalised online experience.
Inspire & Nurture
The Meet & Engage technology used by MBDA includes:
- Live virtual recruiting events couple with a fully-branded, social network style nurture journey
- Take advantage of features like live streaming, content sharing and polling
- Fully-concierged service by our team of experts
- Fully-branded pre– and post–event comms and in-depth data including NPS
Timeline for Onboarding
- Automated candidate journey in a personalised social media style interface
- Content shared by wall posts, videos and articles
- Email and SMS nudges to see fresh content
- Candidate experience pulse checks
MBDA’s Onboarding Portal
Once an offer has been accepted, candidates are invited via an integration between Meet & Engage and Workday (MBDA’s ATS) to register for their Onboarding Portal, through which automated yet tailored and timely content is served up, via a social-style platform.
Content was designed to be shared over a series of weeks and months to match the candidate’s stage of their onboarding journey. The content themes include guidance and reminders about the induction process, videos about the business, employee testimonials, as well as scheduled messages to wish people a happy Diwali/Christmas/New Year.
Through the Onboarding Portal, Channels enable candidates to chat amongst themselves within the professional, branded environment – to arrange house shares per location, for example. The portal was backed up by group and 121 chat events, where candidates could get answers to questions in real time and hear from a diverse range of employees about life at MBDA.
Onboarding portals for different audiences
Underpinning the post-offer experience is the onboarding portal which looks and feels like an MBDA social feed, with a focus on everything a candidate may need between offer and start. An integration with Workday (MBDA’s ATS) automates a registration invitation to candidates at point of offer.
Once in, the portals are bespoke to the candidate’s entry route, with content either tailored to experienced hires or early careers. Further tailoring within that includes, for example, content specifically for graduates returning to employment at MBDA after completing their degree which included a placement with the company.
Each feed shares videos, wall posts, images, social links and captures feedback. Each post on the feed is nominally posted by someone in the business, and hovering over their picture reveals their bio. Introducing colleagues-to-be in this way, MBDA provides rich insight into aspects of MBDA that candidates may not have appreciated, demystifies the organisation, supports D&I representation and brand values and draws candidates into the MBDA family early.
The in-built feedback chatbot provides a chance to capture candidate sentiment at each stage and gives candidates a real say in the shape of the future process.
The Chat Channels in the portal are set up for each MBDA UK site location (Bolton, Bristol, Stevenage) and offer a space for candidates to chat online with future colleagues. Examples include graduates arranging house-shares or asking about parking and facilities. Recruiters and MBDA ambassadors use Channels to post updates, photos and to get light-hearted conversations started, to begin fostering warm, professional relationships early.
Employee stories and testimonials
The MBDA team worked closely with the Meet & Engage team to plot out the content over the relevant time-period for each entry route. Experienced hire candidates have content fed over a few months while they go through security checks and notice periods, while Early Careers feeds include content tied to specific dates aligned with the annual recruitment cycles.
The content is pre-defined, but released slowly to the candidate over their onboarding journey, with nudges by email/SMS when new content is released. This maximises candidate engagement and ensures that actionable content is highlighted in the feed for their attention the next time a candidate logs in.
1-2-1 Live Chat
A key challenge was the disparity of candidates’ onboarding timescales. Offers were being made from mid-September all the way through to early Spring for Early Careers and year-round for Experienced Hires; and a person’s onboarding period could range anywhere from a few weeks to a few months.
For Experienced Hires, MBDA frontloaded the content so that candidates would see all of the important content initially, and then drip fed the less critical content over the course of their onboarding period.
Throughout the process, recruiters hosted group and 1-2-1 live virtual chats for candidates, to help them feel comfortable about what was ahead as they went through the selection process and waited, sometimes many months, to join the business. All elements of the solution capture light-touch candidate feedback after each encounter.
Results
virtual events, with an average Net Promoter Score of 90
registration for Onboarding portal
of Early Careers candidates say that the portal is easy to use
of candidates say that their recruitment experience has been good
of early career candidates felt more confident about joining
The results of implementing solutions to strengthen MBDA’s candidate experience exceeded all expectations and have had a hugely positive impact on candidates. Overall, introducing the Meet & Engage platform has helped MBDA to keep candidates engaged in a number of ways that were previously unavailable.
Participant Feedback
“As it is such a long time between being offered the role & starting, the timeline has been brilliant for making me feel that I’ve not been forgotten about!”
“This was a fantastic way to introduce me to MBDA – people, values, benefits. It was so helpful to learn about the company, and it made me feel included while I worked my notice in my current role. I am so looking forward to my first day.”
“I found it all very welcoming and comforting, and, although I don’t feel 100% prepared (just my general anxieties!), I am excited about starting.”
“Best ‘onboarding’ experience I’ve ever had, thank you.”
Conclusion
The MBDA team have already conducted in-depth analysis of the data emerging from the different onboarding journeys and tweaked the journey for returners, to include more fresh content in response to lower time-spent-engaging data.
They will undertake a review of the content by type (video, wall posts, images, etc.) and by candidate engagement levels with individual pieces of content, as well as refreshing the Timeline with newly branded-elements and new polling tools.
Candidate sentiment continues to be captured as they move through the portal and candidates are signposted towards the feedback chatbot, Debbie, to submit any feedback they’d like to provide. This feedback is regularly reported and provides opportunity for continuous improvements to the candidate experience at MBDA.
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Meet & Engage is Unseen’s candidate experience and onboarding platform.