Winner: Toby Babb, CEO, Harrington Starr

Sponsored by: Flexr

Toby Babb has been the driving force behind creating the Harrington Starr brand. He has put together an outstanding leadership team and set the strategy and vision for the business. Babb runs the Financial Services Technology Breakfast events and has launched Harrington Starr TV. He hosts Fintech Focus TV, interviewing fintech’s most innovative leaders, and Recruiter 360 TV, driving excellence in the recruitment industry by interviewing recruitment experts and performance specialists. Between October 2016 and October 2017, under Babb’s leadership, the company launched and grew its US business by more than 142% year on year. The company expanded with the formation of the Harrington Starr Group, encompassing Harrington Starr (fintech), The North Starr (data, security, software and sales), Harrington Starr Executive Search and Harrington Starr Technology Consulting, as well as Harrington Starr Inc in New York.

• Babb has driven the recruitment strategy and written a training plan to develop those staff in the business. He has written a ‘playbook’ of how to deliver a best-in-class recruitment service and created a modular programme (The Harrington Starr University Programme) that has developed people who have never worked in a professional environment into top recruitment performers.

• He believes in ‘the aggregation of marginal gains’ and puts kaizen –continuous improvement – at the heart of the company’s values. His use of publications, events, video and networking creates a community that allows Harrington Starr to sit at the heart of clients’ minds.

• Many of the 800 companies who the Harrington Starr Group work with were brought on board by Babb’s extensive client network. He continues to be a focal point of many of the company’s leading clients.

• He has spoken at numerous events and on podcasts in the recruitment sector and has been keen to give back by helping to coach and mentor start up businesses in the sector. He has written in numerous publications – including for Recruiter, City AM, Evening Standard – and has spoken on BBC television and radio about the future of the industry.

Judges’ Comments:

“What impressed us most were his engaging communication style, his passionate commitment to raising standards in recruitment, his personal commitment to advancing the skills of his team of recruiters, and his compelling vision not just for his business but for his clients and candidates, too”

Winner: Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill, Director of Resourcing, Nationwide Building Society

At the start of 2016, Nationwide Building Society faced a talent acquisition challenge. The increasing volume of hard-to-fill technically specialist roles represented a concern for a company with no employer brand presence in those labour markets. The then CEO cited the company’s ability to attract and onboard talent as one of the primary threats to delivery of its corporate strategy. The company needed an expert in resourcing who would be able to lead a restructure of the function and transform its resourcing strategy to create a modern and fit-for-purpose model, and Katrina Hutchinson-O’Neill was recruited as director of resourcing. October 2016 to October 2017 was a period of intense activity – directed by Hutchinson-O’Neill but with her leading and engaging every member of the team to support delivery of the vision.

• Hutchinson-O’Neill has clear accountability for the budget, delivery and strategy for all aspects of resourcing – permanent and non-permanent.

• All these measures collectively enabled the company to deliver a £2.14m improvement on the planned resourcing budget position for this fiscal year – despite demand coming in on target for the year. This saving now equates to a reduction of almost £6m, or 60%, of the cost of resourcing to the organisation over the space of Hutchinson-O’Neill’s two years in the role.

• Achieving these results has required not only application of deep resourcing expertise and change leadership skills in the resourcing and HR department, but also well-honed expertise in commercial knowledge, business knowledge, stakeholder engagement and influencing skills to get the senior leadership of the organisation to buy into the new approaches and models.

• These results have made a sizeable contribution to the company achieving its cost:income ratio for the business, reduced risk in these areas, and enabled it to free up money to invest in other initiatives, both inside and outside HR.

• Hutchinson-O’Neill is active as a senior leader representing Nationwide externally – as a spokesperson for recruitment, and also covering diversity and inclusion topics for journalists.

Judges’ Comments:

“Katrina has transformed the resourcing function, delivering savings while improving performance… She demonstrates passion for her team and for the wider resourcing profession, has clear ideas on how to promote the profession, and is taking action to progress these, often in her own time.”

Winner: Steve Beckitt, CEO/Founder, SourceBreaker

Sponsored by: Irwin Mitchell

Steve Beckitt created a new category of recruitment product – end-to-end search, with his application finding recruiters’ candidates, leads and decision makers all in one system. The desired outcomes were to change the way recruiters search, helping them make better matches between candidates and vacancies and do it faster, and to drive improvements in standards across the industry, with easy-to-use technology. Between October 2016 and October 2017, SourceBreaker brought in more than 250 customers in 18 months, along with seven-figure revenues. Beckitt embedded a culture of promoting from within and allowing those promoted to innovate in running their team. He provides external mentors to help new managers develop, and every staff member has had external training or qualifications funded by the company. The entire leadership team has worked their way up into their roles – since launch, no one has been hired in above existing staff.

• Beckitt has led from the front, personally billing more than £400k, implementing 53 customers, planning and testing 22 product sprints, conceiving and launching three new products, hiring 10 staff, training three team managers, managing and scaling up an offshore development team from two to 10, building a website and raising £350k of investment.

• Between October 2016 and October 2017, revenue grew 280% while
monthly recurring revenue grew 172%. The number of customers went up 167% within 18 months of the launch. The headcount rose from seven to 17.

• In just 18 months since Beckitt started selling SourceBreaker, it is now serving more than 4,000 users across 280 agencies worldwide.

• SourceBreaker has also innovated in the selling and onboarding areas – such as the three-month break clause for new customers to limit their risk, and the high-touch implementation and training process.

• The platform has now started to change the standards within the industry. High-performing recruitment companies now ask other suppliers to follow the SourceBreaker onboarding and training processes, as they have yielded such strong results.

Judges’ Comments:

“Steve exudes energy, enthusiasm and innovation…. He has quickly moved the business to a revenue-generating model.”

Winner: Out of This World Candidate Experience: Mars in partnership with Amberjack

Food manufacturing giant Mars aimed to ‘be the company millions want to join, stay and grow with’. To meet this ambition, it realised it needed to tackle candidate. Through partnering with future talent expert Amberjack, Mars was able to make its candidate messaging clearer, personal, more consistent, and authentic. The company has also simplified recruitment into four phases, making the process easier to understand. The entire recruitment process sits on an immersive digital platform called Ambertrack, which provides a continuously branded, fast experience that delivers campaign visibility and measured experience. Candidates have personal mobile-enabled account areas that house all their correspondence, graphically show where they are in the process, and allow them to select interview or assessment centre slots that suit them. The results have been outstanding.

• Last year, Mars’ recruitment campaign comprised seven early careers streams that totalled 41 hires from 2,635 applications.

• Candidates are more likely to share their recruitment experiences on social media and with family and friends. Because Mars recruits young people who are more likely to use and share their views on social media than older audiences, exceptional candidate experience was imperative for the company.

• The company’s new approach is built on insights and feedback captured from candidates in previous campaigns. These outputs translated into a strategy that focused on delivery of an improved candidate journey through an engaging process supported by clear communications. Mars managed candidate expectations, delivered a fair and honest process, and provided fast feedback. The honest and friendly human engagement during the recruitment process kept candidates fully up-to-speed with their progress, knowing what was going to happen next and what they needed to do.

• Independent quality assurance ensures exceptional delivery, consistency and fairness.

• The entire recruitment net promoter score (NPS) was +61 (where a score of +60 is exceptional), underlining the class of the experience delivered in just eight weeks. Time-to-offer is just 60 days, there have been 2,635 applications, 41 hires, no reneged offers, and 100% retention of the first-year intake.

Highly Commended:

Go North East Bus Driver Routeway: Go North East in partnership with Jobcentre Plus and Gateshead College

Judges’ Comments:

“Our winners were clear that retention of people is a clear business benefit and the right thing to do, and stood out for their marriage of automation with a human interface.”

Winner: What Makes You: Babcock in partnership with Blackbridge Communications

With its 2017-18 graduate attraction campaign, Babcock International Group needed a strategy that would provide a strong pipeline of candidates across both its engineering and its business management programmes. The engineering services organisation had an ageing workforce, so it focused on engaging with a broader range of candidates to attract new talent into the business at an early stage. Working with its marketing agency partner Blackbridge Communications, Babcock launched the ‘What Makes You’ campaign in September 2017, which made individual graduates the heroes. The new campaign’s segmented use of double-exposure photography allowed the materials to celebrate the diversity of personalities, professional and personal interests, and the ‘Being Babcock’ values that make up each graduate.

• The fresh approach called for a creative reinvention of the company’s five key channels: website, print, video, social media and on-campus presence. Campaign content focused on personable and engaging stories about Babcock’s people, principles and projects. Blackbridge filmed fun interviews and used video clips of graduates to create profile films specific to each of their roles.

• The channel strategy enabled Babcock to reach a female audience more effectively. By November 2017, 31.5% of all Babcock’s applications were from women, compared with final female percentages of 24.1% in 2016/17 and 19% in 2015/16.

• The campaign has allowed it to engage people with the right candidate profile to go on to have a successful career at Babcock. A much more targeted media strategy has seen the company receive fewer applications, but of a much higher quality, allowing the company to consistently fill more roles week-on-week than in previous years.

• The new recruitment messaging has been effective on Babock’s social media channels, and this has enabled it to extend its reach beyond its main target universities.

• The ‘What Makes You’ concept has been crucial to the success of Babcock’s graduate recruitment. It has built employer brand equity, rising in the ranks in the Guardian UK 300 from 155 to 134.

• Positive candidate feedback at all stages of the recruitment process, with 91% of candidates saying they had a good or very good experience on the company’s graduate microsite, and 96% saying they had a good or very good experience at the assessment centres.

Highly Commended:

Beat the Game Changers: Vodafone in partnership with Pink Squid

Judges’ Comments:

”This was a compelling proposition that sent a powerful message. It succeeded in demystifying the engineering sector… by breaking through stereotypes associated with engineering.”

Winner: Morrisons Makes It: Degree Apprenticeships – Morrisons in partnership with Amberjack

Morrisons has developed degree apprenticeship programmes in four areas – manufacturing, corporate, logistics and retail – delivered in partnership with the University of Bradford and Sheffield Hallam University. To ensure it recruited the right school leavers for its business, Morrisons partnered with future talent specialist Amberjack, and the two firms defined a strategy to recruit 60 degree apprentices. The strategy targeted two audiences: school leavers and influencers (parents and teachers). Candidates said that they felt Morrisons went the extra mile for them.

• The creative approach developed content that complemented and enhanced Morrisons’ new careers website with key marketing headlines. The focus was on what makes the environment, people, career opportunities and interesting initiatives unique to Morrisons.

• Messaging covered three key areas: industry insights, about Morrisons, and the world of its employees – tapping into existing employees and providing platforms to showcase their talent. The strategy targeted school leavers with ‘earn whilst you learn’ messaging, while influencers received messages that focused on tackling the concerns and worries of a school leaver’s parent.

• The targeted marketing mix included web content enhanced with videos, supported by paid media, social media, job boards engagement with local schools and live chat events. Morrisons supplemented external efforts with a huge internal push, engaging colleagues with events, leaflets, dedicated Facebook pages and emails. It held one-to-one conversations with all colleagues aged 17-21 about how they could build their careers in the business.

• The recruitment process includes a short registration, situational judgement test and video interview, where role-specific case studies featuring Morrisons colleagues provide an interactive and realistic experience. Finally, ‘discovery centres’ are held relating to the specific scheme for which candidates applied.

• Morrisons made 60 hires from 1,329 applications for its degree apprenticeship programme.

• The attraction strategy was specifically efficient in delivering a cost per applicant 97% less than average. Reneged offers were 3.33% against a market average of 15%; none of the new apprentices has left the programme. Morrisons has achieved 100% apprentice retention against an average of 79.6%.

Highly Commended:

Aldi apprenticeships campaign – Aldi in partnership with Penna

Judges’ Comments:

“This was a great end-to-end campaign that is embedded in the business and built for the long term. There was a clear focus in every step of the strategy.”