Could you recruit to multiple specialist roles at the same time?
Do you feel confident drawing highly-skilled professionals away from the city and the higher salaries offered by the private sector?
Kingston and Sutton Councils were looking to lead an exciting digital transformation across the two councils, with their shared ICT service as the driving force. Despite an exciting offer for candidates, the councils were coming off the back of two failed recruitment campaigns. They found they struggled to tempt candidates away from other London boroughs, as well as private sector organisations.
They came to JGP needing to urgently fill ten key roles within their ICT and project management teams, as their future plans remained on hold until these positions were filled.
We quickly established that the key to this campaign was telling the Council’s story properly. Whilst it was clear that the councils couldn’t necessarily compete with central London private sector companies in terms of salaries, we were confident that there were plenty of other factors that would appeal to the right people.
Not only was there a generous benefits package available but also the chance to be part of an exciting project moving forward. For ambitious and talented individuals, Kingston and Sutton were offering the opportunity to be part of a collaborative and forward-thinking working environment – empowering them to do their best work.
We began by re-writing all of the job adverts to ensure that the key messages were clear. We also supported Kingston and Sutton in putting together an over-arching welcome pack that went into greater detail in terms of the councils’ plans and what was on offer to new recruits.
Next, it was all about getting in front of the right people. There’s no point in getting the message right if the candidates you want don’t see them.
We ran an attraction campaign on Google and LinkedIn, using in-depth research and past candidate data to inform every decision on how best to reach the right people. With a set budget and ICT keywords notoriously expensive to bid on, we constantly monitored the campaigns in order to make best use of it. This allowed us to ensure that all vacancies received sufficient traffic.
The campaign drove significant levels of traffic to all the vacancies, filling nine of the ten roles as a result, in some cases with multiple candidates. Considering the difficulties the council had previously experienced, they hailed this as a significant success.
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