ESG Topics A-Z
Employee Recruitment
Why it matters
To PepsiCo:
Recruiting great talent influences our ability to be a Faster, Stronger, and Better company. We compete for a diverse talent pool across global markets. To remain competitive, we must identify tomorrow's leaders and give them compelling reasons to choose PepsiCo. Recruiting a diverse workforce drives our strategic insights and fuels our innovation.
To the World:
Corporations meeting employee needs and rights is crucial to societal well-being. Good employment provides workers with a fair income, opportunities to advance, and a sense of purpose. For companies large and small, hiring the right people is one of the most important decisions and greatest challenges.
Approach
Our reputation as a great place to work is vital to our ability to attract the best and brightest in a competitive talent landscape. We proactively showcase our market successes and our collaborative, dynamic work environment to promote PepsiCo to potential recruits.
To achieve this, we are engaging with our current associates, and inspiring our teams to move Faster, Stronger, and Better with PepsiCo. In addition, we are focused on continuing to attract top talent and encouraging candidates to bring their unique skills and experiences to our global operations.
As part of our pep+ (PepsiCo Positive) ambition, we’re striving to develop a Positive Value Chain by building a more inclusive workplace, and by supporting inclusion beyond our own walls. This means working to advance human rights and diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) for our employees, business partners, and communities. Our recruitment practices are an important tool for achieving measurable progress towards our Racial Equality Journey goals in the U.S.
PepsiCo's global Talent Acquisition team is responsible for our attraction and engagement strategies, and has continued to deploy a balance of both traditional and progressive recruitment methods in order to attract a diverse and engaged workforce. We continue to grow our reach in traditional channels such as campus recruiting, while also pursuing proactive pipelining strategies tapping into new sources of talent to reach future prospects. We know great talent can be found anywhere. We're focusing on expanding our campus, professional and executive recruitment efforts by increasing our partnerships with diversity organizations, search firms, and schools to make sure we discover the best talent, no matter where.
Progress
In 2021, the global job market underwent significant volatility, as economic recovery from the global COVID-19 pandemic saw unprecedented numbers of people looking for new work. PepsiCo hired over 80,000 new employees in 2021, 46% of new hires were under 30, and 30% are women. We also continue to build out our talent outreach strategy to meet the goals laid out in our Racial Equality Journey.
One of the key pillars of our diverse talent outreach strategy is our U.S.-based Early Talent Acquisition Team. This team conceives, designs, and executes several signature initiatives and programs to expand our pipeline in support of our Racial Equality Journey. Our programs map to four strategic pillars:
- Early identification programs, including our partnerships at the community college level and our Kickstart Corporate Sophomore Diversity Leadership Program, identify diverse talent from a broad pipeline.
- At the school level, our pipeline expansion efforts span two areas of focus: building out our presence at HBCUs and HSIs (Hispanic Serving Institutions) as well as strengthening partnerships with a diverse array of student communities at other schools from which we recruit.
- We participate in several diversity partnerships and conferences sourcing and supporting a diversity of early talent from across the country.
- Our signature PepsiCo professional development programs provide extensive support to a diversity of early talent, including peer community building and mentoring programs.
With face-to-face engagement not feasible in many markets, our Talent Acquisition team transformed its recruitment process to support virtual interviewing and onboarding for candidates — both professional and student. We continue to embrace advancements in mobile technology and have made significant mobile and digital enhancements to our external careers site, pepsicojobs.com.
In addition, we’ve sustained continued growth on social media platforms with an active presence on key channels including LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We also have a strong overall culture rating on Comparably, receiving Best CEOs for Diversity in 2019, Best Company for Leadership 2020 and Best Company Global Culture in 2021. We are proud to see our highest marks coming from our work culture, diversity, retention, and compensation categories. As of 2022, our LinkedIn followership has soared to more than 6 million.
PepsiCo is proud to be named on Fortune’s 2022 “World’s Most Admired Companies” list for the 17th consecutive year. In 2022, PepsiCo was also awarded Top Employer Global Certification for the second time in a row, one of 11 companies recognized worldwide this year.
Strategic Partnerships
Attracting and retaining female leaders across global sectors remains a key component of our recruitment strategy, and we’ve partnered with leading female-focus platforms such as Fairygodboss in order to advance these efforts.
In addition, we continued to build upon our partnerships with a diverse group of external organizations focused on developing undergraduate and graduate students, such as Management Leadership for Tomorrow, The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, National Sales Network, National Association of Black Accountants (NABA), the Society of Women Engineers, and The National Black MBA Association.
What's Next?
PepsiCo is on a transformational journey to be the global leader in convenient food and beverages and talent acquisition is a key enabler in making this possible. In recent years, major world events have redefined the relationship between people and their work.
In order to progress our Positive Value Chain ambition, we will continue to position ourselves as a top destination for skilled and specialized talent; an employer of choice for early career entry points; and a consistent, equitable experience for all candidates. We will continue to work toward increasing global female representation; and delivering on Black and Latinx representation goals in the U.S. For more information on progress towards these goals, please see Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
It's not enough to just attract diverse talent. Through mentoring, coaching and development programs, we'll foster the unique talents of our employees through every stage of their careers. Around the world, we offer leadership and development programs to help build truly inclusive leadership. For more on how we support the careers of PepsiCo associates, see Employee Learning and Development.
Talent Acquisition will renew emphasis on building talent pipeline strategies based on ever-changing market insights and talent dynamics; and prioritize evolving a differentiated employee value proposition to help increase brand strength, diversity, and critical skill sets.
Last Updated
November 17, 2022