O V E R V I E W
Problem
Deloitte’s Defense, Security and Justice (DS&J) practice , as well as its clients, face a number of recruitment challenges today when targeting early to mid-career professionals in the Millenial and Gen-Z demographics. There is a lack of awareness that Deloitte is a significant player in the federal space, and they often lose candidates to their competitors.
P R O J E C T
Deloitte needs to “Improve Marketing and Communication” with better presence and opportunities within DS&J
Outcomes
Deloitte DS&J Recruitment and Onboarding Redesign
How might we enhance recruitment and marketing communications, personalize the talent experience, and recruit more effectively to exceed the competition?
R E S E A R C H
Clients Goals and Needs
Research Team
Tia Tyrell, Team Lead
Aditya Dash, Research Lead
Naga Raj Tekula, Strategist
My Role
Audrey Keim, Research Lead and Project Manager
Timeline
Understanding the Problem &
Target Audience
After investigating and learning the inner workings of Deloitte DS&J, our team ideated ways to revitalize and adapt its recruitment practices by highlighting Deloitte DS&J as a sub-brand, adapting to current recruitment trends, and optimizing a new retention strategy to retain talent.
Our target audience is intelligent, motivated and idealistic early to mid-career professionals looking to grow themselves, their skill sets, and their career.
O P P O R T U N I T Y
P R I M A R Y R E S E A R C H
Participant Outreach
By developing innovative recruitment marketing strategies, Deloitte DS&J can: Personalize Recruitment marketing for target audiences, create a more engaging talent experience and build an experienced community of professionals within the public service
S T A K E H O L D E R M E E T I N G
Initial Preliminary Research
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P R I M A R Y R E S E A R C H
Kicking off the project, Deloitte made these four deliverables clear to our team.
Deloitte needs to “Beat the Competition” to identify new strategies and strengthen their existing techniques for attracting and obtaining top talent
Deloitte needs to “Focus on the Talent Experience” by developing strategies for improving the experience of top talent at Deloitte
Deloitte needs to “Understand What Motivates Younger Generations” and what motivates individuals to work in the public service?
User Interviews and Affinitization
Our 23 user interviews provided our team great insight into the recruitment experience of new hires, and generated 1000+ data points compiled from participant responses. Using the Affinitization Mapping, we grouped and sorted these data points to narrow down to 10 key insights which create a final narrative that would drive our project forward.
S Y N T H E S I S
Jessica Lam, UX Designer
Phoebe Scherer, Narrative Lead
Yebin Kim, Visual Designer
Lauren Helgason, Visual Designer
Bella DelMonico, Graphic Designer
Before conducting our research, our Deloitte counterparts provided us with a list of 23 new hires from DS&J to conduct interviews with and learn about their recruitment and onboarding experiences.
Our Research Team reached out the 23 new hires, scheduled interviews, and created a discussion guide that would address their recruitment and onboarding experiences with Deloitte DS&J, along with any issues they may have faced during the process.
Ideal Experience Framework
Creative Team
Will Price, Creative Director
Riley Carson, Visual Designer
Alex Pugach, Visual Designer
10 weeks
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Informed by our Affinitization Mapping, this Ideal Experience Matrix is used to plot the ideal feelings, wants, and values of Deloitte DS&J’s new hires as they navigate the recruitment and onboarding process.
From this framework, we see that our interviewees want to feel more clarity and connection throughout the recruitment experience.
Primary Research
Empathy Maps
Marketing Audit
User Interviews
Affinitization
Secondary Research
Ideal Experience Framework
Short-Form Media Content
User Journey Mapping
Emotional Journey Map
Insight Development
S Y N T H E S I S
Persona Matrix and User Stories
We plotted candidates according to the quality of their recruitment and onboarding experiences and how connected they felt throughout the process. We identified 4 persona groups that we categorized and developed user stories that would represent the diversity of new hire experiences.
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Group 1 exhibited previous connections to Deloitte, and an incredible dedication to networking. They showed resilience in their social strategies to make up for the lack of clarity within the processes at hand. Group 1 showcased an ability to be strongly self-motivated and work autonomously and independently while navigating the recruitment and onboarding process.
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Group 2 had slightly better recruitment and training experiences because of previous social networks they were able to utilize throughout their onboarding process. This group is more likely to utilize existing platforms to exert their interests and find answers. However, these candidates continued to note a lack of human touch throughout the virtual onboarding experience.
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Group 3 found Deloitte’s recruitment and clearance process to be standard and had neutral sentiments towards the functionality.They found that the recruitment process operated as they expected in terms of interviews and transparency. Group 3 found themselves
to be frustrated and confused at the lack of transparency and miscommunication regarding their introductions to the firm. -
We had two notable outliers that caught our attention. These two felt the highest level of connection of our interviewees, yet still had unremarkable onboarding experiences.
*Our team later completed a second round ot interviews to dive deeper into these rich findings and build out a stronger narrative of candidate experiences
F O L L O W - U P I N T E R V I E W S
Cross-Checking Insights
I N S I G H T S
After our initial round of analysis and synthesis, we identified patterns in the data that required further inspection.
Our Research Team reached out to 5 previous interviewees to explore our insights in-depth. We asked follow-up questions regarding their personal narratives, retention, onboarding, and recruitment experiences.
Confirmed Insights and Findings
Once we conducted our follow-up interviews with new hires, we confirmed the following experiences and sentiments.
As a collective group, our candidates shared feelings of confusion, being overwhelmed, decentralization and disconnectedness from recruitment, training, and onboarding efforts.
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All groups [see Persona Matrix] discussed that there are a variety of improvements to be made to recruitment, onboarding and new-hire training. Meaning, disconnection and decentralization are systemic issues within Deloitte DS&J.
These systemic issues of disconnection and being overwhelmed are widely connected due to the use of virtual onboarding processes.
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P R O B L E M S P A C E
Scoping The Problem Space
Learning of issues regarding disconnection and overwhelm within the recruitment, onboarding, and training operations of Deloitte DS&J, our team was led to these questions:
How can we make candidates feel connected, valued and warmly welcomed into Deloitte through virtual onboarding and training systems?
How can Deloitte improve their virtual onboarding and training systems to better serve their new hires?
C U R R E N T S T A T E
The following User Journey Maps represent the current journey of Deloitte DS&J’s new hire experience.
Future State User Journey Maps and
Design Recommendations
Incorporating and organizing the full amalgamation of our research from interviews, online databases, and academic journals, the user journey map serves as our guide to the DS&J recruitment and onboarding process. Using this guide, it is clear where and how one can find and fix ongoing barriers that candidates face.
Current State User Journey Maps
F U T U R E S T A T E
Reflections and Takeaways
Closing this 10-week project, our team presented to the executive team of Deloitte’s Defense, Security and Justice department. Informing and sharing our insights and recommendations with our Deloitte counterparts, our team advocated for the new-hire experience and how Deloitte could improve their recruitment and onboarding process while sparking passion and curiosity for the public service.
The executive Deloitte DS&J team continued to implement our design suggestions after our project closed, and enhanced the virtual recruitment and onboarding experience to become more engaging and connective.
R E F L E C T I O N