Case Study: The Mindshare Academy

An employer that wants to shake up their existing apprenticeship programme.

Mindshare – one of the world’s leading media agencies – has always seen apprenticeships as a key part of their talent strategy. But having hired apprentices for several years with mixed results, they wanted to reinvigorate their approach to attract more diverse talent and retain them for longer.

Their aims were to:

• reach and attract talent from more diverse socio-economic backgrounds through a campaign taking their apprenticeships direct to young people in schools across London and surrounding areas
• make more informed hiring choices and improve retention of their apprentices by building deeper relationships with their future talent and developing candidates’ knowledge and skills
• play a key role in addressing the widespread lack of social diversity in advertising and marketing.

Supporting Mindshare to make informed hiring decisions.

We created The Mindshare Academy, a bespoke, 12-month, end-to-end recruitment programme.

We began by targeting schools in and around London, focusing on disadvantaged areas. From there, we created in-school campaigns aimed at students with a wide range of skills and interests, who may not have otherwise considered a career in media. These campaigns were focused on building Mindshare’s employer brand, drumming up appeal for the marketing and advertising industry, and ultimately encouraging students to apply for The Mindshare Academy. 

From those applications, we carefully screened students to invite to a two-day assessment centre. From this we chose those displaying the most potential and matched them with a mentor from Mindshare – ranging from Account Executives to the CEO – for monthly one-to-one sessions over a period of seven months.

Next, we worked with the Mindshare team to offer the most promising candidates a four-week, expenses-paid placement to help inform final apprenticeship selections.

• Over 25 schools engaged each year
• Over 2000 young people reached through our campaign each year
• Over 100 applications received annually
• 40 students selected to attend a two-day assessment centre each year
• 20 students matched with a mentor from Mindshare each year
• 14 apprentices hired across the two years of the programme
• 100% retention rate for both cohorts