Trying to reach candidates in the adult social care sector can be difficult. Like so many public sector organisations, councils are competing over the same pools of candidates to fill many vacancies.
Jobs Go Public works with Halton Borough Council to create targeted digital recruitment marketing campaigns with paid advertising to extend the reach of their hiring processes to:
- Find candidates and fill gaps quickly in a competitive market
- Save the hiring team time and recruiting costs
- Gather candidate data to enhance future hiring campaigns
…which resulted in a 44% increase in applications
About Halton Borough Council
Halton Borough Council is the local authority for the Borough of Halton in the North West of England. It is a smaller local authority but has a diverse range of jobs on offer. The team works well with colleagues in the city region to promote the area as a great place to live and work.
The council has recently adopted a skills-based approach to hiring with the help of Jobs Go Public.
The challenge
Halton Borough Council wanted to increase applications and not rely on traditional advertising to fill multiple roles in their adult social care team. We worked with them to create a digital recruitment marketing strategy to attract candidates and mitigate the workforce shortage.
The primary objective was to leverage paid advertising to:
- Reach potential candidates,
- Generate interest in adult social care positions
- Increase reach
- Encourage applications.
Our digital recruitment marketing approach
Jobs Go Public has adopted what we call an “Always On” approach to paid advertising, where promotional activity is consistent and constant.
So, when we’re not promoting specific roles, we’re rolling out ads that promote working at Halton Borough Council and their careers site. This approach builds longer-term brand visibility with passive candidates in a competitive marketplace.
According to LinkedIn, candidates are 1.8x more likely to apply for a job if they’re familiar with the company.
In this case, we focused on creating compelling advertisements to showcase the council’s Employee Value Proposition (EVP). By focusing on values, behaviours, and attitudes, rather than extensive experience and qualifications, we were able to reach a wider adult social care talent pool.
Our Google Ads-certified team researched the most effective keywords to target across PPC platforms such as Google and Microsoft and put our plan into action quickly.
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Shortlisting candidates
The campaign combined paid search advertising, candidate management, boosted jobs and email marketing activities to showcase vacancies and why candidates should choose them.
Our resourcing team fully briefed candidates to give them an overview of the recruitment process, as part of our candidate management service. As part of our skills-based approach, we shortlisted candidates who may not have extensive experience but come with the right attitude and transferable skills.
At Halton, many roles include full training and support to gain qualifications.
Having this initial shortlisting in place enables the client to interview candidates
straight away without having to do an initial sift.
Having run the digital recruitment marketing campaign initially for three months, Halton was already reaping the rewards.
The strategic use of paid advertising, optimisation and candidate management enabled the council to attract a pool of qualified candidates. Ultimately this led to a significant reduction in reliance on agency staff.
We provided regular reporting on campaign performance and planning for the month ahead and stuck to the media budget by optimising advertising based on what was working well.
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