How ORMIT finds tomorrow’s leaders online

Over the last decade, professional teams in most sports have established their own academies. The goal: Developing tomorrow’s top talent, without being dependent on expensive transfers.

What once was a unique model, has today been adopted by most of the world’s biggest clubs. It’s common knowledge: If you want to win tomorrow, you have to invest in talent today.

What a striker is for a first-league football club, could be an IT Project Lead for ASML or Rabobank

Corporations share that need with the management of any club: To succeed in the future, they need to make sure that they have the right talent available for specialized positions as soon as it’s needed.

Here’s where ORMIT comes into play: The “developer of top talent”, just outside of Utrecht, functions as a bridge between candidates and companies – through traineeships. In 2-year traineeships, their candidates find the jobs that they love doing – and excel at.

Many football clubs don’t want to buy the expensive striker, they develop them themselves. That’s what we have been doing since the 90’s – for businesses. - Nick Hoogendoorn, Member Managing Board, ORMIT Group

A job that candidates love doing, and less risk for the employer

Hiring for many positions is a risky game. Sometimes, it’s not a fit – for cultural or professional reasons – and you need to start from scratch. A misunderstanding like that quickly leads to six-figure costs for a single position.

At the same time, specialized talent is scarce – especially in a small country like the Netherlands.

Just because you like it in university doesn’t mean you will like the job

It’s a common problem with graduates: They liked a subject in university, but once they’re confronted with the day-to-day of business life, they realize that the job is different than they thought it would be.

ORMIT’s Multicompany traineeship solves that problem. The candidates they recruit get the chance to explore many different roles in different  organizations, which enables them to make a sustainable career choice.

They learn a lot about themselves, work, and employers. This way they discover the right career path for them.  If there is a fit with work and the organization, they are more likely to be successful and work longer for you. - Nick Hoogendoorn, Member Managing Board, ORMIT Group

Hire for the growth mindset

Nick Hoogendoorn understands that you can’t expect candidates to bring all the skills to the table.

“We hire trainees for personality”, Nick says.  “Do they want to grow? Do they value personal development? Do they want to create a foundation for their career? Are they coachable? Skills always change, but if the personality allows them to grow, they can adapt.”

That means that Nick and his team at ORMIT need to reach the best candidates – not only based on their CV, but especially based on their personality and potential. But how do you do that? They combine experience with the newest technology.

Hiring for personality: How do you reach the right candidate?

“Our biggest challenge is to attract the right talent for our trainee positions”, says Remon Melenboer, Recruitment Marketeer at ORMIT. “Our creative content needs to make a personal connection with our candidates.”

For ORMIT, that means focussing on a mix of employer branding and job ads through social media. Remon tries to paint the picture of “life at ORMIT”, and shows that a traineeship is more than just a job.

At the core of his creative strategy: Data.

I constantly work to optimize our campaigns, and will play with the creative in reaction to performance data. For example, in a campaign that started with underwhelming performance, we adjusted the creative to incorporate a quote from our client, stating that they’re “the best kept secret in Eindhoven”. I worked to incorporate this quote into artwork with a mysterious element of surprise. The result: a massive increase in meaningful interactions with our ad. - Remon Melenboer, Recruitment Marketeer at ORMIT

Digital recruiting that optimizes for performance – and personal connection

Remon uses Wonderkind’s Talent Attraction Technology to promote job ads via social media. He also uses it to create awareness via Google Display ads.

Job campaigns via Hubspot

Instead of an ATS, ORMIT creates landing pages in Hubspot, a CRM typically used by marketing and sales teams.

“We really work like a marketing department would when generating leads. Based on the education level required for a position, the applicant will receive an automatic email follow-up”, says Remon.

Nurturing candidates through events

Once a suited candidate signalized interest, it’s all about the personal connection. ORMIT hosts multiple personal events with current trainees to show the interested candidates what it means to be an “ORMITer” – and what they can expect.

This personalized nurturing flow goes hand in hand with constant optimizations of the recruitment marketing funnel. Remon looks at the campaigns that drive the best-fitting applicants, and learns from them.

"We’re seeking the best and brightest candidates –that’s a challenging group to target. When we see that a campaign doesn’t deliver the right quality of candidates, we can immediately react, tweaking the targeting with Wonderkind to improve the results. I have the feeling that the system gets to know us more, and gets better with every campaign." - Remon Melenboer, Recruitment Marketeer at ORMIT

Full control over every campaign to maximize the ROI

ORMIT constantly needs to attract more candidates to their traineeships. That means that a lot of campaigns need to be constantly monitored, and adjusted.

“Wonderkind always gives me an overview of the job campaigns and how they are performing”, says Remon. “I then add my own mix of content ads through Facebook to create even more personalized contact points.”

Thanks to Wonderkind’s dashboards and features, Remon is always on top of his costs per lead and his costs per qualified lead.

“We measure awareness in reach, and we also align our reporting around these metrics. The next goal is to also connect our HR systems to the workflow, so that we can measure and optimize our campaigns based on cost per hire, too.”

Talent Attraction is a strategic commitment

“If a company needs someone yesterday, they will just work with a recruiter”, says Nick Hoogendoorn. “But if they need talent that can lead their company in 1-2 years from now, a trainee can grow into that role. Hiring for roles like IT Project Leads can be extremely hard.”

Over the years, ORMIT has developed different programs for their clients. They train their candidates through traineeships within a company, but they also build their own talent pool through multi-company traineeships.

Their own client relationship hasn’t changed much through the internet.

"We deliver high-end services to high-end customers. We have a very personal relationship with our customers, and they know that they can rely on ORMITters. We use digital channels to our advantage. But they don’t replace a real, personal connection."