L’Oréal and General Assembly launch industry built assessment on digital marketing competencies

L’Oréal and General Assembly help individuals and employers have better transparency into digital marketing skillsets with new industry built assessment

NEW YORK, USA/ CLICHY, France, 14-Jun-2018 — /EuropaWire/ — Digital marketing roles – which have doubled in demand over the past 3 years – increasingly require data, analytical and technical skills. CMOs and hiring managers are challenged with even understanding the actual competencies of their teams, and marketers with benchmarking themselves against the market needs. As such, it’s vital to have transparency into the competencies of both potential candidates and current employees.

To meet the staggering need, L’Oréal and General Assembly today announced the launch of the “Digital Marketing Level 1” (DM1), an industry built assessment to help individuals and employers have better transparency into digital marketing skillsets. 4,000 employees at L’Oréal have taken DM1 and now L’Oréal is also using DM1 to identify future employees, as 500 L’Oréal candidates have taken DM1 during their recruitment process over the past 3 months.

DM1 assesses six key areas of digital marketing: digital advertising, engagement marketing, content marketing, mobile marketing, social media and multichannel marketing. The 45 minute online assessment tests foundational skills from setting objectives to optimizing campaigns, using questions based on real world case studies.

Understanding the competencies of teams can guide priorities in training, identify individual learning paths for training and development as well as measure improvement post-training. In practice, L’Oréal employees across 60 countries will benefit from personalized training programs based on their competencies.

“The idea of creating a “GMAT for digital marketing” was brought to us by Vincent Balusseau, Associate professor of marketing at Audencia Business School and expert in the digital sphere. It came to life thanks to the partnership with General Assembly, with whom we have co-created DM1,” says Jean-Claude Le Grand, Senior Vice-President Talent Development, L’Oréal worldwide. “As a company recognized for its marketing expertise, it was key for us to accompany the deep transformation of marketing in the digital era by offering our employees and candidates the opportunity to benchmark themselves against the best marketers worldwide.” 

Additionally, hundreds of job candidates have already taken DM1 as part of their recruitment process. L’Oréal is now using the assessment as a tool to consider an even larger, more diverse set of candidate profiles.

DM1 is now available for broad use but has already been used in practice by dozens of companies and over 10,000 individuals around the world following thorough testing to verify that the most relevant competencies are assessed and that scores reflect actual skills possessed. The industry-built assessments were the result of collaboration with several companies including L’Oréal, Google, Bonobos, UM, and Priceline. L’Oréal is the 1st company to leverage DM1 on a global scale.

“At General Assembly, we are focused on confronting the 21st century skills gap and part of that is addressing the need for both candidates and employers to have an unbiased way to evaluate skills. It is incredibly important for us to start with leading companies along with industry research to understand the current demand and needs for digital marketing skills and L’Oréal ensured that we are testing relevant skills in authentic ways,” said Jake Schwartz, General Assembly CEO.“General Assembly’s hope is to accelerate the use of skills-based hiring in the technology sector. We see a future where education to employment is about the skills you demonstrate, not where you’ve been.”

DM1 is part of a suite of assessments offered by General Assembly Credentials that help individuals demonstrate their skills and help employers assess, diagnose, train and reassess talent – ultimately helping drive performance in today’s skills-based economy.

About L’Oréal
L’Oréal has devoted itself to beauty for over 100 years. With its unique international portfolio of 34 diverse and complementary brands, the Group generated sales amounting to 25.8 billion euros in 2016 and employs 89,300 people worldwide. As the world’s leading beauty company, L’Oréal is present across all distribution networks: mass market, department stores, pharmacies and drugstores, hair salons, travel retail, branded retail and e-commerce. Research and innovation, and a dedicated research team of 3,870 people, are at the core of L’Oréal’s strategy, working to meet beauty aspirations all over the world. L’Oréal’s sustainability commitment for 2020 “Sharing Beauty With All” sets out ambitious sustainable development objectives across the Group’s value chain. www.loreal.com

About General Assembly
General Assembly (GA) is a global educational company on a mission to empower a global community to pursue work they love. Focusing on the most relevant and in-demand skills across data, design, business and technology, GA is confronting a skills gap through best-in-class instruction and providing access to opportunities. GA works with students online and in person on more than 20 campuses in 6 countries. GA also works with employers to help companies source talent, assess talent and transform talent. For more information, please visit: generalassemb.ly/credentials.  Additionally, GA’s focus on affordable and accessible education combined with our education-to-employment approach is helping to create a diverse talent pipeline. For more information, follow us @GA or on LinkedIn. 

“This news release does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy L’Oréal shares. If you wish to obtain more comprehensive information about L’Oréal, please refer to the public documents registered in France with the Autorité des Marchés Financiers, also available in English on our Internet site www.loreal-finance.com.
This news release may contain some forward-looking statements. Although the Company considers that these statements are based on reasonable hypotheses at the date of publication of this release, they are by their nature subject to risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated or projected in these statements.”

Contacts L’ORÉAL (switchboard + 33 1.47.56.70.00)

Individual shareholders and market authorities 
Jean Régis CAROF 
Tel: + 33 (0)1.47.56.83.02 
jean-regis.carof@loreal.com

Financial analysts and institutional investors
Françoise LAUVIN 
Tel: +33 (0)1.47.56.86.82
francoise.lauvin@loreal.com

For further information, please contact your bank, stockbroker or financial institution (I.S.I.N. code: FR0000120321), and consult your usual newspapers or magazines or the Internet site for shareholders and investors, www.loreal-finance.com,the L’Oréal Finance app or call the toll-free number from France: 0.800.66.66.66.

Journalists
Polina HUARD
Tél : +33 (0) 1 47 56 87 88
polina.huard@loreal.com

Nadege Joyaux
Tél : + 33 (0) 1 47 56 78 31
nadege.joyaux@loreal.com

Contacts General Assembly
Marissa Arnold
Tél: + 1 (612) 309-9564 
marissa@generalassemb.ly
press@generalassemb.ly