Background

Frontline jobs—entry-level positions in service industries like insurance or automotive sales—are a feature of India’s expanding service economy. Our client offers shared HR services to large companies, and an outsourced recruitment processing service was a logical completion. We were approached to brand the new business.

Gathering Insight

Existing recruiters operate from the hundreds of bucket shops that dot Indian cities. Company HR managers rely on these to keep up with business’ chaotic appetite for people. It’s often a cynical business, where processes are subverted, candidates coached to fudge applications, and viewed as a herd to be led to the employers’ gates. A job could be wrested, but pride sacrificed.

Better candidates tended to apply directly to companies, but in small numbers; the shops provided quantity, of mostly poorer quality candidates and tended to repel the few better ones. A lose-lose.

Strategy

We persuaded the client that the new brand should adopt an entirely different model and aim to attract better employees or ‘confident seekers’. Surely the existing shops insulted the expectations of educated youth? Our shops would be bright and pleasant walk-in spaces, modelled on coffee shops rather than employment offices. Crucially it would treat candidates as customers, restoring self-respect to the trade.

Brand

The brand sports a strongly upbeat, optimistic personality. The sites were branded ‘Jobstores’ that offer a choice of a jobs and assist in making the right selection, being fair and professional towards both candidates and employers.

Named “Hired!” to signal positivity, it’s expressed through signage, interior spaces, and as many communication vectors we thought we could control. Naturally, behaviour guidelines accompanied the graphic design principles.