Unilever hopes that the promise of a real job from the outset will prove more attractive than an investment bank’s pay package in luring top MBA graduates.
The maker of Magnum ice cream and Dove soap plans to quadruple the number of workers it hires with the qualification in the next two years to support its continuing drive into emerging markets and to meet its goal of doubling sales.
The company has set up a formal MBA recruitment channel under which successful applicants will be placed in vacant posts in the company rather than on a training programme, as is normally the case in more lucrative industries such as finance.
Paul Maxin, Unilever’s global resourcing director, said that the move would result in a significant improvement in the quality of talent coming into the company, which was needed to support its growth strategy.
“They do real jobs from day one, which is our unique selling point — we are not pretending to pay as much as Goldman Sachs,” Mr Maxin said. He added that Unilever was particularly interested in MBAs who had a “global mindset” to develop further its business in markets such as China and India. The consumer giant, which will take on at least 25 MBA graduates this year, rising to more than 100 by 2014, has entered into a partnership with 30 leading business schools to help to source its future employees, including the London Business School, the Kellogg School of Management in the United States and the China Europe International Business School in China. The partner schools were chosen because of their significant proportion of students from emerging markets, as well as women, and will receive priority access to vacancies.
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The company hires 11,000 staff each year, including 1,000 management trainees and another 1,000 who are placed in middle-management roles.
A trial intake last year included the London Business School-educated Emily Klooster, who works as the company’s global brand development manager for Knorr.
“Rotation is a great way to get exposure to many different aspects of a business, but on the flip side you suffer from a lack of accountability,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed real responsibility. MBAs feel that they have done their time studying.”
The company’s MBA programme will be available to both graduates and alumni of the partner business schools.