Criterion Partnership and British Gas shortlisted for best Corporate use of Online Recruitment award
09/01/2008
The highly successful project implemented by Criterion Partnership and the British Gas Services resourcing team is one of the finalists for the 2008 Onrec Magazine awards for the online recruitment industry.
Criterion Partnership enabled British Gas Services to more than double the efficiency and effectiveness of its online recruitment process by combining database marketing to increase attraction with values-based online preselection to increase culture-fit and retention.
BGS recruits 1,500 people per annum into engineering, call centre and sales positions. In 2006 the positions were being filled, but with high advertising and selection costs, with only 25% of candidates successful at assessment centre.
Alan Redman, Lead Consultant on the project said that "the online values-based system we designed to meet these challenges is both innovative and effective because it fulfilled a number of critical objectives". The success of the project was demonstrated by:
Successfully identifying higher calibre candidates with a better cultural fit, and more inspired to join BGS. This is evidenced by:
- Double the number of successful candidates at second round
- Recruiters within the business believing the quality of candidates has improved by 55%
- A 50% reduction in the number of assessment centres needed to fill positions.
- A 20% increase in number of female applicants recruited.
- Attrition in call centre roles reduced from 43% to 9% in 2007
Applications were generated at 1/20th the cost by integrating sophisticated database and e-marketing techniques (e.g. mobile phone text job alerts) alongside word-of-mouth marketing.
Alan added that the psychometrics within the system "communicated the values of the business to candidates through their bespoke content and ensured that throughout the whole preselection process that candidates are treated like customers".
The awards ceremony takes place on March 5th. For more information on the Onrec awards click here.
Click here for a case study describing the British Gas Services online assessment project.
