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Aug 208 min read

(EN) How do you win IT talent with live streams in job ads, ALDI SÜD?

A real innovation hit: I'm interviewing Simon Galka about the new employer branding format that combines live with real human dialog


Simon Bühler, Global Employer Branding Lead
Simon Galka, HR Consultant Employer Branding, ALDI SÜD IT

Julian: Hi Simon, could you briefly introduce yourself?


Simon: My name is Simon Galka, and I am responsible for employer branding in the IT department at ALDI SÜD. I manage our personnel marketing campaigns and also innovative initiatives.


Julian: When people think of ALDI, IT isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. But under the motto "Reprogramming retail," you are hiring an impressive 1,000 IT and data specialists in a year. What do they work on?


Simon: They handle all digital solutions that create added value for our business. As the inventors of the discount principle, we are very focused on efficiency and ensure that everything we do helps us offer products at low prices with the best quality.


Digital solutions can help in minimizing repetitive or time-consuming tasks for our colleagues in the stores.


Julian: Where do you collaborate with ALDI SÜD, and where does ALDI SÜD IT do its own thing?


Simon: We have active exchanges with the national employer branding team. However, we have our own target value proposition and different target groups, which we address in different ways.


We share certain resources, such as our ATS. But we have our own career site and partially separate social media channels focused on IT.


Julian: Where do you face the most challenges in IT recruiting? And is your well-known brand a curse or a blessing?


Simon: Pro: You don’t need to explain what ALDI SÜD is. The brand has great appeal and recognition both in Germany and internationally. Consequently, we receive many applications, fortunately also in IT.


On the other hand, we need to explain that ALDI SÜD is a technology-driven employer with exciting tasks.


In summary, the challenge is to attract the right people and to select the right candidates from the large number of applications.

 

Live chat in the ad for Supply Chain Backend Report Developer

Julian: And that’s where, if I understand correctly, the aldi.deepdive(live) comes in. Unfortunately, I missed your presentation at the EMBRACE.festival. But several participants told me it was the best case of the day. What exactly is aldi.deepdive(live)?


Simon: In a nutshell: It’s the first live exchange between candidates and colleagues from IT, who are directly working in a specific job, presented compactly in the respective job ad.


Julian: Everyone is talking about automation, chatbots, and AI. Why are you focusing on live chats with real people?


Simon: Every company needs to be aware of its own challenges. Chatbots and AI are certainly the right solution for many. But they are mainly good for providing or retrieving information quickly and in a standardized manner.


However, in our case, it’s more about personal contact. It’s not about selling T-shirts or shoes, but about jobs. And those are high-involvement products. What matters is the fit, the culture, the projects, and the people you’ll be working with.


That’s why we focus on human interaction at one of the very first touchpoints in the candidate journey, enabling an authentic interaction directly in the job ad.


Live studio

Julian: Live chats themselves are nothing new. What’s special about aldi.deepdive(live)?


Simon: The specific tailoring to a job. Candidates can talk to someone who actually works in the very job they are interested in.


But above all, it’s the element of surprise: It’s simply something new that you probably haven’t seen in a conventional application process.


Julian: How could people sign up and participate? And how did the livestreams go?


Simon: Last year, we piloted it with three livestreams. There was no registration function; it was freely accessible, and we streamed it via YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and our job ads.


Now that we’ve integrated it into an ongoing process, there is a registration function via MS Teams. This is our central hub from which we continue to stream, for example, to LinkedIn.


However, registration is not mandatory; it’s about creating more closeness. Those who register have other interaction options, like chat, “thumbs up,” and theoretically even video or microphone.


Julian: How did you recruit your ambassadors, and how did you prepare them?


Simon: We’re fortunate to have very loyal and committed employees who like to talk about their projects.


We placed a query for all employer branding measures of the year. One of them was aldi.deepdive(live). We tried to represent as much diversity as possible from the interested employees.


The participants were thoroughly briefed but not scripted, as authenticity is our priority. So, we gave them a lot of freedom with caution.


Julian: How did the candidates react to the whole thing?


Simon: Two words sum it up well: surprise at being live in a job ad, so transparent. And gratitude because we were able to give real insights to many who had no idea about ALDI SÜD. Or to show people who were generally interested that we might not be the right employer for them.


Julian: This reminds me of Telekom's Open Application: It’s not just about advertising, but about finding the right people. – What kind of questions did you get from candidates? Did anything surprise you?


Simon: Honestly, I expected rather superficial questions. That candidates would just watch the stream for half an hour instead of browsing the career site.


But most of the questions were very deep into the technical aspects. You could tell that only people with a basic understanding tuned in. This was also due to the marketing and the fact that each stream was created for a specific job. So, it led to a conversation on equal footing.


Julian: You advertised in the job ads and also on social media. What worked best?


Simon: Yes, IT talents don’t necessarily actively browse all job ads. So, we used our active sourcing teams to point out the live stream instead of jobs for a change.


It also worked very well to advertise in environments where the Q&A principle already plays a role: online portals like gutefrage.net or networks like Reddit, Stack Overflow, Twitch, and Quora, where you can expect a large number of IT and data talents.


Live chat outcomes

Julian: You mentioned that you piloted it last year. What was the outcome, what did you measure?


Simon: We achieved such good results and won some awards, so we decided to continue this year. We now run it continuously, with at least one stream per month.


Of course, we measure classic reach metrics. But even more important for us is interaction. We aim to create real connections. Therefore, the most important numbers are the questions asked and the reactions.


About 15 participants applied for a job afterward, plus an unknown number we couldn’t track. But for us, it’s primarily an employer branding measure, not a recruiting one.


Julian: Elena from BVG said something similar about their Job Shop: They didn’t want to talk anyone into a job.


Simon: Yes, we analyzed in studies that ALDI SÜD is not always associated with exciting tasks and innovations. Also, in terms of personality, closeness, and authenticity, we seem to be lacking something in our personnel marketing mix so far. That’s why we wanted to show ourselves and make ourselves tangible with the live streams.


Jobs with live stream announcements

 

Julian: Can you say something about the implementation?


Simon: That’s actually what I’m most proud of. The time between the first idea and the first live stream was only 58 days. It was really an absolute sprint.


Julian: That’s impressive.


Simon: One of the biggest challenges, of course, is the live aspect. The word alone triggers alarm bells for many. A lot can go wrong.


Nevertheless, we showed a certain pragmatism, wanted to "just do it" and try it out. Especially since it fits well with our current agile transformation.


Julian: Let’s talk about stakeholders. Who was involved internally, and who helped you with the implementation?


Simon: In the pilot phase, we had external help from our employer branding agency "YeaHR!". We now manage the project completely in-house.


The fact that the project took off is thanks to the commitment of our colleagues: from the moderators to the IT that integrated the live streams into the job ads, the translation teams, and the teams in front of the camera – it was an internal success.


Julian: And how did it go with the costs?


Simon: Keeping a lot in-house has significantly reduced costs. And it has definitely been more valuable for us to do this than to buy online banners for 40,000 or 50,000 euros, where I don’t know what return they will bring.


Currently, we only pay for the promotion of the streams, and that is, of course, scalable up or down as needed.


Julian: What personally surprised you the most about the project, what did you learn?


Simon: That we won an innovation award with it. You’d think nowadays you’d have to come up with some technological marvel. But with something as seemingly simple as live streams in a seemingly outdated format like a job ad, we won the innovation of the year.


It’s now a fixed part of our employer branding mix. To think a bit about the future: It could be expanded so that any recruiter, any hiring manager can set up a live stream at any time in self-service.


Julian: What advice would you give to others who want to follow your example?


Simon: For the EMBRACE.festival, I put together a success formula with four words that spell out ALDI:


  • A stands for Authenticity – that’s what it’s all about; it doesn’t work without it. So, give people freedom, don’t dictate anything.


  • L stands for Liveliness. We need to infuse the streams with something special so that it doesn’t become boring and isn’t just a typical lecture.


  • D stands for Distribution. It was crucial to select the right channels to reach the right people.


  • I stands for Interaction. That’s why we do it live because we really want contact with the candidates and want to get questions and answers or reactions from the community.


Julian: The ALDI principle? That could be your next book.


Simon: Maybe, who knows?


Julian: You’re something of an innovation lab at ALDI SÜD; your career site and job ads are bursting with creativity. Which of your candidate experience ideas are you most proud of?


Simon: Our team is very focused on innovation. We have landing pages for individual job profiles, a site in easy language, or the gimmicks around the live stream, such as a live countdown within the job ads.


Overall, I’m most proud that we analyze ourselves annually to see if our candidate experience is still up to date and how we can improve.


Julian: What’s next on your agenda?


Simon: Soon, there will be an exciting target group campaign focused on Women in Tech. And we want to continue approaching the topic of gaming. This is important for IT in general. But we also found internally that it resonates well, and we’re currently building a gaming community.


Through this, we want to establish the first initiatives, which will eventually become visible externally and be useful for employer branding.


Julian: A nice teaser. I recently spoke with Simon Bühler from DHL about gaming in employer branding. I’m looking forward to your action.


Simon, thank you for these great insights behind the scenes. Merci and all the best for the future!


P.S.: And anyone who wants to check out the live streams can find them here:


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