Here at Jobsgopublic, we take great pride in the working partnerships that we have formed with some of the top employers within the public and not-for-profit sectors in the UK. As a result of our collaborations, we have helped our partners overcome significant challenges in recruitment as well as providing advice and guidance on various aspects of branding and communications.

One particular partnership that has seen significant successes, of which we are particularly proud, is with Birmingham City Council.

Origins

This partnership was born out of the need for Birmingham City Council to overhaul the way it was recruiting social workers. Recruiting social workers is notoriously challenging but vital for any Council, making an effective recruitment process essential.

Since 2008, following a series of “inadequate” OFSTED judgements and assessments, the effective recruitment of social workers became one of the Council’s top priorities.

The council knew they had to take a different approach and BCC’s Recruitment Team formed a close partnership with Jobsgopublic to rise to this large-scale challenge.

Launch

Back in 2012, Jobsgopublic worked with Birmingham to create a solution that would change social workers’ perception of the council, and build a pipeline of experienced candidates via an online talent portal.

To do this, Jobsgopublic devised a campaign in which candidates were encouraged to visit a dedicated social work microsite and prompted to register their details on an online talent pool.

This multi-channel attraction utilised Google, Bing and LinkedIn advertising as well as targeted emails and enhancements on Jobsgopublic’s platform to drive regular, highly targeted traffic to the microsite.
Results
Over the last 12 months, Birmingham’s campaign has gone from strength to strength.

The “always on” campaign has created a pool of 1,282 qualified social workers. These are communicated with on a regular basis with information such as upcoming events, new vacancies and regular news.

Social media has become an integral part of BCC’S attraction as it allows them to target people based on behaviour as well as location and age. This has helped drive highly relevant passive candidates to the talent pool.

Jobsgopublic have also continued to develop and grow BCC’s microsite using Google Analytics, heat maps and candidate surveys. New site features include a dedicated interactive events page, videos and a newly designed job page.

These developments have led to 134 social workers being recruited in the last 12 months.

Future

The achievements of this partnership have led to an ongoing collaboration which will aim to not just bring further progress for Birmingham City Council but set an example for others to follow in order to enjoy similar success.

“We continue to be delighted with the results of our partnership with Jobsgopublic. Having worked with them on a range of campaigns over the years, we always feel that they put our best interests at the heart of all their work, they understand our needs and are always responsive to requests.

Jobsgopublic consistently use innovative solutions to develop our ongoing Children’s Services campaign. The implementation of an ‘always on’ attraction campaign led to a consistent stream of candidates entering our Talent Pool, giving us a growing database to tap into when needed. The Talent Pool is easy to use and allow us to quickly run a search and contact candidates on the same platform.

Our microsite is regularly updated and developed as Jobsgopublic use analytics and heat maps to ensure that the space is used in the most effective ways.

The range of digital advertising options made available to us has allowed us to significantly increase the visibility of our vacancies whilst also employing sophisticated techniques to ensure that both active ad passive jobseekers are targeted and applications come from relevant candidates. This is especially true of the social media advertising techniques that have been implemented which hae dramatically increased traffic to our microsite.

In the last 12 months we have recruited 134 social workers, made significant savings in both time and money and raised the council’s profile in an extremely positive way. We would have no hesitation in recommending Jobsgopublic to others, the team are always on hand to help, quick to turn things around and truly understand the area in which they operate.“

Sue Wait – Head of People Resourcing & Business Development
Birmingham City Council