L'Oreal: Reveal Your Talents

The Indian arm of the French cosmetics company, L'Oréal has announced the launch of the second edition of Reveal, which is a unique recruitment initiative. Reveal is an interactive e-recruitment platform, which encourages students to test their managerial skills through a series of multiple-choice questions on key business functions.

"L'Oréal is focussed on recruiting diverse talent; and for that, it is important for us to have unique ways of attracting people to us," says Mohit James, HR director, L'Oréal India.

Designed for students of all disciplines and backgrounds, Reveal is an online experience that enables participants to problem-solve in a virtual L'Oréal work environment. It also gives candidates personalised feedback, as well as the chance to be interviewed by the company - an opportunity to potentially fast-track through parts of the recruitment process.

In the online strategy game, players move through the various levels as management trainees working on virtual projects. Along the way, they solve different business tasks across departments such as finance, sales, marketing, operations and research and development. The goal is to complete various challenges with maximum scores. The game takes a minimum of 48 hours to complete.

On successful completion of the game, the candidates stand a chance to meet L'Oréal executives, receive hands-on experience with L'Oréal and an invitation to an exclusive event - B-Revealed, an interactive session where shortlisted students are invited to explore the company. This includes different functions at L'Oréal, career opportunities and the various products of the company.

"The initiative serves two purposes. First, they (the participants) get a peek into the world of L'Oréal. Second, they also get into cross-functional mode. Some discover where their strengths lie - the areas they are good at, which function they want to take up," says James.

The company is promoting this game through its Facebook page. It is also communicating directly to business schools through mailers and student forums, apart from visiting campuses such as Mudra Institute of Communications Ahmedabad (MICA), Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Lucknow, Management Development Institute (MDI), Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) Delhi, SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) and Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS).

Globally, the company has a gender ratio of 43:57 (male: female); whereas in India, this figure stands at 69:31.

In 1993, the company started with a global management game called Brandstorm, as a recruitment tool. This is an on-campus game for those interested in the marketing function. Till date, more than 50,000 people have taken the test across 43 countries. In 2010, around 7,100 students from 221 universities across the globe participated in the game.