How Webrecruit partnered with Headway Devon to improve their talent attraction efforts via social media and online recruitment advertising
The Company
Headway Devon is a local charity dedicated to improving life after brain injury. They provide essential services across Devon and Torbay for people with acquired brain injuries, their families and carers.
The Challenge
We spoke with Hannah Blatchford, Executive Assistant for Headway Devon, who handles the organisation’s day-to-day recruitment activities. One of Headway’s main challenges was recruiting for care roles because of difficulties identifying and reaching out to their target audience.
“In the past we have only used basic advertising through the Jobcentre, Proud to Care Devon, Indeed, Facebook and Gumtree. We also advertised occasionally on local community noticeboards at post offices and supermarkets.”
As Headway struggled to reach the right audience, this led to difficulties attracting quality candidates for their roles, and in many cases, failing to recruit for a number of posts. This impacted the organisation’s ability to grow their services in key areas.
The Solution
Headway Devon began working with Webrecruit in May 2018. As Webrecruit’s headquarters is based near their own offices, Hannah felt that the Webrecruit team truly understood the challenges associated with hiring care staff locally and attracting the right talent.
“We realised that we needed more guidance in understanding and reaching our target audience for recruitment, and to be more active in recruiting on social media and online platforms. As a locally based company, Webrecruit offered the skills and experience we needed to overhaul our recruitment and improve it moving forward in this competitive job market.”
Webrecruit provided Headway Devon with a competitive recruitment advertising package, comprising branded advertising campaigns on all the major generalist job boards and specialist charity job boards. This would ensure that their vacancies received maximum exposure online.
Additionally, Webrecruit created sponsored Facebook campaigns that were targeted to reach a specific audience in the locations Headway was recruiting. This allowed Headway Devon to also reach passive candidates and increase awareness of the organisation as a local employer of choice. These campaigns featured eye-catching visuals of Headway Devon’s clients and employees at work, as well as video content.
The Results
Since partnering with Webrecruit, Headway Devon has achieved a number of positive results, most notably an increase in qualified candidates.
“We have seen a significant increase in the quality and quantity of applicants to a wide range of full and part time roles. This has enabled us to hold competitive interviews that help us to select the very best candidate for the role. We have drastically improved our staff team structures by being able to recruit in the roles we were currently lacking, and this has helped to improve our service quality, staff morale and staff retention.”
Headway Devon also experienced significant savings to its time-to-hire as the organisation no longer had to run recruitment campaigns several times before attracting the right candidates for their vacancies.
Additionally, sponsored Facebook campaigns helped the organisation access a much wider audience; social media is a key area for recruiting in the social care sector in Devon. Campaigns that worked particularly well on Facebook were Community Support and Centre-based roles which attracted a lot of attention from users.
Final Words
“I would highly recommend Webrecruit to other organisations looking for help in improving their recruitment campaigns. The Webrecruit team has provided excellent guidance on identifying and attracting our target audience, and this has led us to recruiting some excellent new members of staff who have complemented and enhanced our teams.”
– Hannah Blatchford, Executive Assistant, Headway Devon
Want to learn more?
Find out how Webrecruit can help you to increase your reach and help you attract more candidates via our social media and online recruitment advertising solutions.
