Rubber ducks, it seems, can help small businesses recruit graduates.

Henderson Loggie, a Scottish accountancy firm, is one of many small businesses that have recognised the benefits of employing graduates. However, this is no easy task: they are competing with multinational organisations that offer established graduate training programmes and the prestige of a well-known name.

For Henderson Loggie, this is where the rubber ducks came in. It needed to find a way to stand out, along with making sure that graduates knew about the benefits of working for small or medium-sized companies — and all this had to be done on a limited budget.

The company targeted Edinburgh and Dundee university career fairs, running a campaign called “Why just go with the flow?” Representatives handed out miniature rubber ducks to attract attention, and a postcard with a simple motif of three yellow ducks swimming in one direction and a blue one swimming in the other.

Marketing director Anne Farquharson wanted to communicate a simple message — that Henderson Loggie, in being small, could offer certain benefits to graduates that larger firms could not.

“We had written on the postcards, ‘Okay, so we’re not one of the Big 4. We don’t have a prestigious London address and can’t offer you international travel or glamorous pop-star clients,’” she said. “Yet, we also pointed out that graduates would be somewhere smaller and more personal where they could grow quickly and be treated as individuals.”

Farquharson spent only £1,000 on the campaign, yet applications from graduates went up 87%. She believes this is largely down to the research that preceded the campaign. She studied material from the Association of Graduate Recruiters on graduates and their employment expectations.

“We began by researching our target audience — finding out about what they were looking for. That enabled me to market in as focused a way as possible. I needed to maximise every pound spent.”

What Farquharson recognised — and advertised effectively — is the appeal a small business can have to an ambitious graduate.

Alistair Leathwood, managing director of the recruitment firm Fresh Minds Talent, believes small and medium-sized businesses have a great deal to offer today’s graduates.

“I see recent graduates as ambitious and hard working, but also a bit more aware of what it takes to get somewhere,” he said. “Small businesses appeal because if you are a star it is easier to rise to the top.”

Zarine Manekshaw, who graduated in 2005 and is now in her second year at Henderson Loggie, agrees. “I didn’t apply for somewhere bigger because I didn’t want to be another statistic,” she said. “I wanted to progress faster and get down to the nitty gritty.”

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