Bespoke Recruitment Campaigns

Having decided to take their IT function in-house, Southern Water needed to build a new, multi-team division. They were looking to recruit a number of Service Desk and IT Operation roles and needed to do so rapidly.

After our proposal and designs were agreed, Southern Water wanted their new team on-site within a very tight eight-week period. To add to the challenge, all the roles were to be situated in their HQ in Worthing, West Sussex, meaning a limited pool of local candidates.

The meter was ticking!

The Findings

Due to the nature of the project and the timeframes involved, we really had to hit the ground running.

Southern Water needed immediate access to established candidate networks, effective search tools and an innovative approach to employer branding.

Gattaca’s employer branding expertise, combined with the long-term experience of our specialist IT recruitment brand, Networkers, made us the perfect fit to resolve Southern Water’s challenges.

The Approach

We worked closely with Southern Water to gain an in-depth understanding of their business, their target candidate audience and the overall campaign objectives.

Using detailed market research and candidate data analytics, we developed a number of ‘personas’ which helped us understand the main demographics, social backgrounds, salaries and expectations of target candidates.

Building bespoke candidate attraction campaigns

The Outputs

In order to attract quality candidates quickly and help tell Southern Water’s exciting story, we created a bespoke eight week campaign that consisted of:

Microsite for a simple one-click application

Careers microsite

Digital candidate pack

Targeted email and social media campaign

We also provided advice on which job boards to use to attract the right people, as well as candidate screening and support right up until on-boarding.

Our campaign messaging was consistent, accurate and compelling, creating better brand awareness and an all-round better experience for the candidates.

The campaigns were a huge success with results exceeding client expectations:

8,010 microsite views
794 candidate pack reviews
308 applications
20 hires

“One of the biggest challenges was timescale. We had to recruit 22 IT Service Desk positions within an eight week period in order to build a new team. Gattaca supported our recruitment with a tailored campaign using a range of channels to ensure we filled these roles quickly and effectively.”

Cathryn Jeffery, Head of HR Retail and Support Services at Southern Water

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