CorpComms Magazine

When the first round of recruiting for the National Trust's new Head of Digital Media failed to find a suitable candidate, the team at the Wiltshire-based conservation charity realised something had to change. 

Looking to attract high-flying digital specialists to the post, they launched a dedicated website, offering an introduction to the role, online digital testing labs giving examples of the digital advances already being made in the National Trust team, interviews with the incumbent Head of Digital, employment perks, along with a virtual tour of Heelis, the organisation's award-winning head office. 

After a week with the site live, they had hired their new Head of Digital Media. 

Jenny Rettie, head of recruitment at the National Trust, said: 'The first time the position went to market, our recruitment strategy was in its infancy. We went down a fairly traditional route and we didn't get a very high level of applications. Then, a day before the interview, four or five candidates suddenly dropped out. 

'We enlisted our star advertising partner ThirtyThree to find out what put them all off. And they rung around and came up with a few issues with the role. One was the location - the central office is based in Swindon, another was the salary, and a third was that they felt the process didn't move fast enough - it had only been two weeks since we opened applications but apparently this is normally a very speedy field to recruit in. 

'Now we knew all of that, it was really easy to sell the role. We added a video of Heelis - our award-winning head office. We pointed out that if you don't want to live in Swindon, we're in the middle of beautiful Wiltshire. We upped the salary.  

'We posted it on Twitter and Facebook and suddenly they went nuts. It was the same job,  but now people were texting it to friends and colleagues, retweeting it; hits on our site rocketed. Then we closed the recruitment process after a week. It was an amazing success. Just by engaging and asking what's putting you off, we had this incredible turn-around.'

share me: del.icio.us | digg | reddit | Tweet