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

A need for new bus drivers and a local unemployment crisis led the North East region’s third largest employer, bus company Go North East (GNE), to partner with Gateshead College and Jobcentre Plus to launch an innovative training and skills development programme, aimed at supporting people back into work, with the opportunity of securing one of 250 driver jobs. Running until July 2017, the Go North East East Bus Driver Routeway programme was completed by 99 local people. Of those who took part, 45 – almost half – secured driving roles with Go North East, compared with just 9% of traditional route applicants.

• Unemployment in the North East is higher than anywhere else in the UK. Meanwhile, the bus and coach industry is facing a national skills shortage, and there are concerns about the regional skills gap. GNE employee attrition is below the national average, but this critical role requires a constant recruitment cycle.

• The bespoke nature of the training programme ensures that candidates meet the specific needs of the role and business, and are provided with the best possible chance of success throughout each stage of the recruitment process.

• Jobcentre Plus helps to recruit applicants and covers their expenses. The programme provides high-quality support to all, from the start of recruitment. Unlike the standard GNE application process, which includes an online application form, those coming through this process receive intensive expert training and mentoring right through to interview.

• The free four-week programme combines professional training courses, 99% of which are delivered by Gateshead College. Tyneside Training Services conducts practical driving assessments and tuition. GNE delivers a driver skills training course, plus depot tours, a company induction, and health & safety and occupational health training. Those who do not secure a GNE role now have transferable skills to support them into alternative employment.

• Feedback from participants who have been successful or unsuccessful in gaining employment with GNE has been overwhelmingly positive, with many sharing that they have benefited personally as well as professionally.

Judges’ Comments:

“Not only was this partnership a solution to a need for drivers, but it filled roles for other local businesses and helped local residents get back to work”

Winner: The Home of Proper Jobs: Charles Tyrwhitt

Clothing retailer Charles Tyrwhitt was suffering from popular misconceptions that it was a stuffy business that made ‘shirts for dads’. So its three-strong recruitment team decided to bust the myth. The team developed a recruitment website, ‘The Home Of Proper Jobs’ and moved to a new recruitment philosophy – treating candidates in the same way the company did its customers. They built a transparent and engaging recruitment process with different, enjoyable interview techniques and tools. They made the company’s people into ambassadors, and championed its founder, Charles Tyrwhitt, as the face and voice of recruitment – in an animation. The new social media strategy provided a quirky view of what it was like to work for the firm. Charles Tyrwhitt now has a consistent and seamless experience for candidates coming into the business.

• The recruitment team featured many of the company’s people in its employer branding. ‘The Home of Proper Jobs’ website became a connector – everyone felt they owned a bit of it.

• The team culled old recruitment practices and developed fun and engaging assessment centres across retail. They reviewed the internal recruitment process and developed a transparent and easily accessible internal application process, refer-a-friend process and promotion/relocation policy.

• Having a strong employer brand has given people confidence to talk about the firm with pride. The team has seen a shift in ownership of candidate attraction from being an HR role to a business-wide role. Line managers have the confidence to recruit in new ways and tackle biases. The company now recruits for potential and behaviour rather than only experience. Candidates are more excited, informed and engaged from the start of the process, so the company is winning talent over its competitors.

• As a result of effective development of the employee attraction brand, the team has influenced the development of the entire employee life cycle. It has highlighted areas that seemed shabby when compared with the new recruitment experience, and drive process improvement.

• Two of the company’s business goals are growth and ‘putting people first. The development of the employer brand has improved recruitment’s ability to support both of these goals.

Highly Commended:

Clearly Hastings Direct: Hastings Direct in partnership with That Little Agency

Judges’ Comments:

“We were impressed at the achievements being delivered entirely by a small in-house team, on a shoestring budget… They did a great job engaging their senior leadership team on the journey.”

The AA (Talent Acquisition Team – TMP Worldwide)

Motoring association the AA previously had a recruitment function that was fragmented, traditional and driven by people who weren’t talent attraction experts. The function has now changed its internal structure, processes and policies, selection options and operating model – implementing a strong, direct sourcing strategy focused on longer-term employee value rather than short-term reactive hiring. It has appointed talent experts from client-side roles, agency and job board backgrounds, giving an excellent spread of experience, culture and approach, and is now known as the Talent Acquisition team. To enhance its screening process, speeding up the turnaround time to ensure it didn’t lose candidates, it partnered with TMP Worldwide for all its candidate management and candidate communications.

• The AA developed and launched its employer brand, encapsulated by the slogan ‘Ready for ANYTHING?’, which underpinned all of its recruitment communications, from job postings to the careers site.

• The comprehensive redesign of the careers site launched in February 2017. This gave the AA the perfect vehicle to combine all of the attraction and engagement elements to emphasise the brand, the breadth of career opportunities, and a fantastic candidate journey.

• In early 2017, the organisation moved to a strengths-based interview process. This was a massive change for the business and required training and upskilling of more than 100 hiring managers.

• Candidates are now more informed. The new careers site, featuring the ‘AAbot’ chatbot, provides candidates with a realistic view of the AA and its culture.

• Turnover has decreased from 45% to 24%; the offer to acceptance ratio is now 98% – it was 88%; candidates arriving on induction is now 97% – it was 75%; candidates passing probation induction is now 98% – it was 81%; turnaround time for candidate screening (from application) is now under two days – it averaged five; average time to first contact for a candidate is 0.6 days (it was 2.5); average time to offer is 26.4 days (it was 37).

Highly Commended:

Cisco

Warwickshire Police and West Mercia Police

Judges’ Comments:

“This application stood out as an exemplar, delivering transformational results across all areas with clear supporting data.”

Winner: Acorn Recruitment

Recruitment and training company Acorn has a team of only six marketers, but their output is huge. Their responsibilities include candidate attraction; generating warm sales leads, and developing long-term relationships with clients; and reinforcing positioning and strategic planning. The majority of candidate attraction is carried out online and comprises bespoke material for social media activity, emailers and branch posters/flyers. The firm works with a PR agency to ensure Acorn is represented on various media channels. During the past year, the team have run two campaigns to increase applications, which boosted applications by almost 30%. Overall, the company’s permanent and temporary placement figures increased last year by 30% and 7% respectively.

• All members of the marketing team contribute to each candidate attraction campaign – from content, web development, design and delivery – so the cost is only for print and potential gift incentives, which can be only a few hundred pounds yet raise applications between 30% and 100%. The biggest spend for candidate attraction is on job boards.

• The two candidate attraction campaigns the team ran during the year in question were Make Monday Rock, which ran from September to December 2016, and Want More 2017, which ran from January to April 2017.

• Two examples of bespoke projects created for individual clients during the year in question were an agency worker attraction campaign for print agency Harrier and a peak period candidate attraction support campaign for multinational company Tata.

• The team carry out a lot of client entertainment to develop key relationships, and attend jobs fairs and exhibitions to ensure they are speaking to jobseekers at every opportunity.

Judges’ Comments:

“The winner demonstrated a variety of channels and routes to market, with linked return on investment.”

Winner: NES Global Talent

Sponsored by: 6CATS International

NES Global Talent delivers compliant workforce solutions, providing candidates across the oil & gas, power, construction & infrastructure, life sciences, manufacturing, chemicals and mining sectors worldwide. With more than 45 offices in 28 countries, the company has access to the best international talent. Despite the difficult trading conditions over the 12 months in question, the company has managed to not only increase its market share within oil & gas, but also successfully transfer this brand reputation to new sectors.

• For the past 24 months NES has been on-site in Jazan, Saudi Arabia, near the border with Yemen, supporting gas and chemical supplier Air Products. Yemen is experiencing civil unrest and military conflict, so Air Products needed a partner with in-country expertise to source quality candidates and mobilise them safely, co-ordinating the visas and travel for this troubled region.

• G2X Energy had to staff an operations and maintenance team to run its greenfield gas-to-methanol plant in Texas, US. The site is in a difficult region for recruiting talent, owing to the stable workforce and the retention strategies of the many well-established plants in the area. NES, through its local and international talent pools, was able to source and attract the required large workforce.

• The firm’s response to the sudden illness of one of its contractors for BP, based in Oman, showed the excellent candidate care. When the contractor suffered a heart attack, NES first attended the local hospital and later arranged for him to be repatriated to the UK, acting as a liaison point throughout his illness and recuperation.

• The company showed innovation by embarking on a survey of the oil & gas market in partnership with job board Oil and Gas Job Search, in January 2017.

Judges’ Comments:

“The winner showed an impressive knowledge of the international market it operates in, and has supported clients and candidates in some of the most challenging locations in the world.”

Winner: Christos Tsaprounis, Head of People and Culture, Auto Trader UK

Nominated and voted for by the Recruiter Awards judges, the Impact Award recognises a recruitment professional who makes a profound difference to their own organisation, their profession and the wider world.

This year’s winner describes himself as a “people geek and diversity & inclusion advocate”. Those who know him describe him as “extraordinary”. He believes in creating spaces for people to thrive – and that the first step in effective recruitment is to be a great employer, that you need to make your organisation worthy of being loved.

Teaching children to code, pushing his business to participate in community events such as London and Manchester’s Pride and active involvement in charity work, our Impact-ful winner exemplifies the best amongst recruitment professionals today.

Working at Auto Trader UK for four years, where he has also held the role of Head of Resourcing, he previously worked at The Co-operative Bank.

Winner: All we need is you!: Guidant Group in partnership with Shop Direct

Recruitment outsourcing provider Guidant Group has a tailored managed service partnership with digital retailer Shop Direct, fulfilling the retailer’s requirements for temporary warehouse staff across all its fulfilment centres. To support peak hiring, Guidant’s internal recruitment marketing team worked directly with its on-site team and Shop Direct to deliver a cost-effective and innovative candidate attraction campaign. Guidant’s campaign was underpinned by a well-researched, planned and executed recruitment marketing strategy. It targeted specific types of workers, and challenged perceptions that warehouse work was not really for women. Guidant successfully recruited more than 1,500 temporary warehouse operatives for the peak period. The budget for the entire campaign was just £15k, making the average cost per hire £10 (based on the 1,500 recruited during the peak period).

• Guidant met key stakeholders at Shop Direct to discuss the importance of the retailer’s reputation in the local candidate market, hiring trends and the main benefits of working at Shop Direct. These became a core focus of Guidant’s strategy and helped to form its campaign, ‘All we need is you!’.

• The company focused on four key personas – Daytime Dave, Weekend Wasim, Night Shift Nick and a new target demographic, Female Farah – and what would appeal to them in terms of pay and monetary benefits, work environment, random acts of kindness within the workplace, and a strong charity culture.

• Guidant based its campaign theme on real workers at Shop Direct, to help candidates relate – as well as be able to imagine themselves working within the team in a warehouse environment.

• Guidant’s in-house design and copywriting teams worked closely with the marketing team and Shop Direct stakeholders to come up with concepts for creative across all chosen media platforms, and accompanying engaging job advert copy.

• The Female Farah persona proved a success, as 69% of all female hires occurred during the period Guidant’s candidate attraction campaign was live. In addition, it has also further developed diversity within the workplace.

Judges’ Comments:

“This was an extremely well researched campaign – we loved the use of personas. It won, though, because of its stand-out cost-per-hire and other impressive metrics.”

Winner: Amberjack

Amberjack provides end-to-end outsourced recruitment services including consultancy, candidate attraction, online recruitment systems, candidate management, assessment and selection, onboarding and development. The company’s advanced systems and intelligent solutions are designed to deliver an improved candidate experience, which the client benefits from. As a strategic partner, Amberjack focuses on not only optimising return on investment for all its clients, but also creating tools and processes that deliver results, from intelligent attraction to recruitment process outsourcing, and bespoke assessment and selection tools. A deep emerging talent specialist, its tools and understanding enable it to differentiate an employer’s propositions and ensure it recruits the best early talent. All the support and the tools it develops are tailor-made for each organisation. The company’s technology makes volume recruitment more effective, and it is also expert in diversity and adverse impact management.

• Client Mars – which nominated Amberjack for the award – says the supplier ensured “world-class levels of candidate experience” in its recruitment partnership with the food manufacturer. The supplier provided transparency and efficiency, it cared about Mars’ processes as much as the client itself did, and it was fun to work with, says Mars.

• The company delivers effective research in the Future Talent space – The Future Talent Insights Report – and engages the professional community by running Masterclass events.

• Innovations that make volume recruitment more effective include the imPACT paperless assessment platform and the Amberchat platform. The Ambertrack applicant tracking software includes integrated net promoter scores to measure candidate experience.

• The company is regularly recognised for its commitment to diversity & inclusion, as can be seen from its work with Network Rail.

• Amberjack carries out an independent Do, Check, Review process, which guarantees that it identifies any potential inconsistencies for Amberjack and its clients before they become problems.

Judges’ Comments:

“The winner was a good all-rounder, applying technology insight, innovation and social good. We were impressed with the detail and exceptional client focus.”

Winner: Syft

Syft is an online temporary staffing platform, set up in 2015 but launched as an easy-to-use app in June 2017. It connects employers and workers, bringing transparency and efficiency to temporary staffing. The platform covers a range of businesses, and thousands of experienced workers who have been interviewed and vetted by the company’s recruitment team and ready for hire. A ratings and feedback system allows the user to see an employee’s past reviews and performance ratings after each completed shift. The company says its system saves employers up to 55% on agency fees while paying workers more, and that it tackles long-term industry problems such as a high no-show rate – while the industry average no-show rate is 12.5%, Syft achieves an average of 1.7% rate by implementing a strict recruitment process and ensuring workers are engaged and motivated. The company offers employee perks and benefits to its workers, including free phone insurance and discounted gym membership.

• The company screens every worker on the app, vets them face-to-face, and checks their skill and experience.

• The Syft app sends reminders before shifts and reminds workers to clock-in digitally with a QR code scanner.

• The company ensures workers are motivated by enabling clients to pay staff on average 22% more than the industry average hourly rate.

• Syft’s algorithm saves time by enabling clients to fill dozens of shifts in a matter of minutes. The app automatically pairs workers who fit the job requirements, so clients can make job offers in batch. Digital timesheets save clients’ time on handling paper timesheets and avoid inaccurate payroll.

• Syft’s latest innovation, Syftforce, allows clients to manage and share their internal staff across multiple sites, achieving operational efficiency as well as reducing agency spend.

Judges’ Comments:

“Syft’s strength lies in its simplicity. It represents a win-win for the client and candidate, and has the potential to scale.”

Winner: Amberjack

Amberjack provides end-to-end outsourced recruitment services including consultancy, candidate attraction, online recruitment systems, candidate management, assessment and selection, onboarding and development. The company has been proactive in promoting innovations, and in using knowledge and industry insights to improve recruitment effectiveness. Its ‘insights’ research continues to grow. Its ‘future talent group’ is the largest group of its kind on LinkedIn, with more than 10,500 members. The firm has also hosted ‘masterclasses’ – free events that share insights on research findings, gamification, candidate experience, diversity, the Apprenticeship Levy and return on investment.

• Clients including Mars, Network Rail and Unilever have all benefited significantly from Amberjack’s research and its recommendations, through the improvements the firm has made to their processes and the results achieved in partnership.

• Achievements during the year in question include: winning two Recruiter Awards; winning more than £2.2m-worth of new business; attracting new clients including BGL Group, UK Power Networks, PwC, Deloitte, EY, Spirax Sarco, RWE Innogy and nPower; publishing of market-leading insights research based on 500,000 candidates; the launch of Amberchat platform and the hosting of more than 100 chat events for clients; the launch of a paperless digital assessment platform called imPACT.

• Outstanding results against industry benchmarks include: 40% happier candidates (based on Inavero UK staffing report, 2017); 23% faster time to offer (based on Institute of Student Employers annual survey); 25% less cost per hire (based on ISE annual survey); 17% greater diversity (based on ISE annual survey); 20% fewer reneged offers (based on ISE annual survey); 17% greater diversity (based on ISE annual survey); and 61% happier clients (Inavero UK staffing report, 2017).

• An example of innovation was a project carried out for Network Rail to attract more candidates from minority groups. Amberjack’s innovative technology underpinned the entire process, providing real-time reporting for complete campaign visibility and enabling accurate pipeline forecasting. It enabled the company to apply positive action through analysis of big data at the item level.

Judges’ Comments:

“This entry stood out owing to its personalised approach to client solutions … A strong blend of technology and people-led features ensures a holistic and effective solution in every case study.”