New career site strengthens Lotus Bakeries’ employer identity

Since early 2022, interested candidates have easily been able to find all possible job opportunities at Lotus Bakeries, in all countries worldwide, on the new site www.lotusbakeriesjobs.com, the perfect spot to get acquainted with the unique Lotus Bakeries family.

unambiguous employer brand

“Scarcity in the labour market is a challenge that also crosses our path,” starts Stephanie De Lange, Group HR Director at Lotus Bakeries. “In the past, this scarcity was limited to specific bottleneck professions, but now we see that the War for Talent is prevalent in all markets and that a wide range of profiles in the labour market is now desired.”

This created the need to define and profile Lotus Bakeries even more as an employer brand. After all, within the employer landscape, Lotus Bakeries has unique characteristics because it combines multiple worlds. “An international player with towering ambitions, grand expansion plans and yet still the warmth and humanity of a family business. Open-minded and inclusive, with room for personal impact. Professional and personal. Solid and adventurous. You won’t easily find those interesting combinations anywhere else,” says Stephanie.

“We also notice that in countries where our products already enjoy high brand awareness, our employer awareness can also ride this wave. In countries where we are not yet so well-established, this still has to be worked on. For example, attracting talent in Thailand, a new country for Lotus Bakeries, will require more effort.”

Wide range of career opportunities

An attractive career site is therefore the perfect place to highlight both the employer identity and the career opportunities. “Where in the past only a limited number of countries in which Lotus Bakeries operates had their own job website, we wanted to centralise our wide range of career opportunities in response to our global growth on the same clear platform,” continues Stephanie.

That way, visitors also immediately understand the international character and scope of Lotus Bakeries and also get to know Lotus Bakeries’ diversity of brands and products in an original way. “Our differentiated portfolio, which on the one hand consists of the Lotus® Biscoff® indulgences but also of the attractive range of natural and healthy snacks within LotusTM Natural Foods, only serves to fuel further interest in our company. It often turns out to be an important motivator for new colleagues.”

cultural match

A good career site is more than just providing an overview of open positions.

“It’s also a full on-brand introduction to Lotus Bakeries as a company, to our company culture and our TOP values. For example, passion is a very strong guiding and present value that all Lotus Bakeries colleagues have in common. We also wanted that to be reflected on the career site. And what better way to do that than having our own employees speak in testimonials,” says Stephanie. 

Videos and photos of employees, taken at various locations around the world, give an authentic view of the organisation, giving interested parties a first look at what it is like to work at Lotus Bakeries. “We notice that if potential colleagues get to know our culture, combined with our personal approach and modus operandi, this ensures from the very beginning that they themselves also immediately feel whether or not they would be a good fit for our company.”

smoother process for candidate and Employer

Create a fun, smooth and efficient experience from the moment a candidate arrives on the new website. That was the goal. Information needed to be intuitive and quick to find. When creating the site, a great deal of attention was paid to the smooth navigation and to making it as easy as possible to apply. 

All experiences are critical in forming an opinion about the workplace. Starting from the first contact, followed by recruitment and onboarding. “We have therefore ensured that the career site connects seamlessly with MyLotus, the global HR platform in which all HR data from the different countries is centralised and available in real time,” explains Evy Van den Brande, HR Technology & Reporting Manager.

“This integration delivers efficiency gains and ensures that much of the recruitment process, ranging from processing the applications to the administrative start-up and onboarding, is all digital and streamlined. Scanning documents, emailing back and forth with candidates all disappear thanks to our integrated tools. New employees often tell us that they really appreciate being onboarded in such a professional manner.”

Sharing is caring

The career site has been designed to look good on a laptop, tablet and mobile phone. An additional benefit is that jobs can also be shared on social media channels, such as LinkedIn, with just a few clicks. "The shift from traditional job platforms to socail meda as an employer channels is nothing new, so that sharing functinality on our website was a must-have," says Evy. Besides 'efficiency' and 'digitalisation', 'personalisation' and 'fun' were also important elements for the new site. "When visitors navigate our site, they are asked wat their name and their favourite brand is. What follows next is a highly personalised and therefore unique experience, which fully matches our employer brand," adds Stéphanie. 

IT DOES NOT STOP HERE

The new website already received a very enthusiastic welcome. "We are getting hugely positive reactions from our HR colleagues from other countries, as well as from new colleagues who recently joined," says Evy. According to the first statistics, on average 10,000 people visit the website very month. "We clearly see higher inflow of new candidates since the launch of our new website, especially in countries such as the United States, Italy, Spain, Germany and Switzerland."

“Not only is the inflow important, but of course the number of effective hires we make through the job site is as well. We can present the first great results for this as well,” says Stephanie. “We will invest even further in the future in optimising the techniques to make our career site score high in the search engines (SEO) and in developing authentic video material for specific recruitment campaigns,” she concludes.