CASE STUDY
www.barkers.co.uk
Despite the prominence and respect the firm enjoys in the US, its country of origin, it lacks a comparable profile in the UK and Europe. It remains just outside the exclusive handful of the very best-known firms – the Arups and Atkins of this world.
For example, graduates join a Practice Area Network – a global community of experts in their own or related fields of endeavour. So it struck us that what really makes PB stand out is that it manages careers the same way it manages projects. And in just those few words we had our value proposition, our differentiator. We already knew that the imagery on most competitor websites and other employment marketing materials consisted largely of hard-hatted people and photographs of projects that barely went beyond technical records. We were determined to do something authentically different. So we took the decision to use graphics and animation rather than photography to create a look and feel that was as distinctive as the proposition we were communicating.
Result
Our instincts and experience told us that the proposition and the way we expressed it creatively would resonate with an engineering audience; our research within the sector confirmed it. As a report from our Research and Planning Department put it, “Broadly speaking (job satisfaction) relates to problem solving, making a valuable contribution, developing a wide range of skills, having a personal development plan, long-term career opportunities and having clear but not limiting objectives.” We gave Parsons Brinckerhoff its own distinctive proposition or promise; we also gave ours – to improve candidate quality and reduce costs. As the campaign progresses, there’s growing evidence that, just as PB delivers on its promise to candidates, we’re delivering on our promise to PB. We were gratified that the website we created won the Best Website Award for a company recruiting fewer than 30 graduates at the 2007 AGR Awards.
How do you differentiate yourself?
Differentiation is at a premium in the engineering consultancy sector where skills are short. Many sum up their value proposition in words that are grandiose and defy credibility – ‘Together, let’s build the future’, ‘We shape a better world’. And as we pointed out to Parsons Brinckerhoff when we made our initial presentation, even the recruitment websites in their sector seem to be bathed in the same overall blue. PB’s challenges to recruit the most able engineers and graduates from other numerate disciplines were particularly acute. PB wanted and needed a stronger profile and a more clearly differentiated offering.
Our answer?
Identify a clear value proposition and market it. The closer we looked at the firm, the longer we spent talking to its people, the more we realised that authentic differentiation lay just beneath the surface. PB has an exceptionally rigorous, highly professional approach to the development of professional careers.
www.pbgrads.co.uk – winner of the AGR 2007 award for ‘Best website for a company recruiting under 30 graduates’