Cambridgeshire County Council (CCC)’s level of vacancies for social workers had increased to 10% of all positions in 2016. Moreover, reports revealed the Council was paying agency workers almost double the wages of salaried staff.
The cost of agency workers was crippling, and the ever-changing workforce was seriously hampering the quality of service CCC provided.
A lack of quality applicants was due to experienced social workers opting to commute to London for better pay, as well as less travel during the day. This affected both adult and children’s services.
Additionally, a series of advertising campaigns failed to deliver the quantity or quality of candidates CCC needed. The situation was getting critical.
Despite this, in September 2016, CCC set itself the ambitious objectives of:
- Filling 24 vacancies as quickly as possible.
- Hiring higher quality candidates. Previous candidate quality was regarded as poor and the council wanted social workers who would make a difference.
Our strategy
First we targeted candidates who might otherwise not look at the CCC website. We did this mainly through search engine marketing (SEM) and social media. We then provided more information about the culture of CCC, as their limited website was unappealing. This included rewriting all 24 adverts to create a consistent style and format.
We advertised 24 positions and CCC would have been satisfied with a handful of hires. However, we filled all 24 vacancies.
Additionally, the campaign cost £24,775, resulting in a fantastic cost-per-hire of just £1,032.
As we already stated, this was not all about quantity, it was about quality too. In this respect, Caroline Adu-Bonsra commented “We feel that we are getting a much better quality of candidates.”
"We’ve been really impressed with Jobs Go Public. They have helped us to create an excellent online web presence which has resulted in a number of quality applications. Successful candidates will make a positive impact on our vacancies figures and agency bill and save the council a large amount of money. We look forward to partnering with Jobs Go Public in the future and look forward to seeing the results from the next phase."
Karen Tolands – HR Business Partner.
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