Virgin Media has successfully recruited 16 highly skilled employees to a variety of positions in just three months, thanks to an end-to-end recruitment project carried out by IT recruitment agency, Crimson Limited.
The telecommunication giant appointed Crimson after previous internal andexternal recruitment efforts had been exhausted.
Virgin Media had traditionally recruited within and around London for its operations centre in Hook, but after saturating the geographical area, the company was finding talent difficult to come by. As a solution Virgin Media opened up a new office in Birmingham, creating a high number of vacancies. However, its search for candidates was still being affected by an upturn in the employment market.
Crimson was invited to present a recruitment proposal which fulfilled the specific requirements of Virgin Media. This initially outlined a need for eight resources; but was later extended to encompass sixteen vacancies, delivered in a phased approach.
“Originally we planned to recruit for our southern offices, which are located just outside of London. However, salaries in the Capital are higher,candidates are in short supply, and staff retention is low. It became apparent that in order to attract the right candidates we needed to relocate our efforts, choosing instead to increase our presence in Birmingham,” Andy Leach, Senior Manager at Virgin Media.
The brief outlined a requirement for candidates with experience in high level technical roles. It was also important that candidates held personality traits which complimented the working ethos of the company, and who had an analytical mind-set. Crimson proposed a fully managed end-to-end retained recruitment campaign to deliver the initial eight resources and establish a strong working partnership in order to fulfil the remaining recruitment resource requirements atphase two of the campaign.
“We organised a series of meetings with Virgin Media to fully understand their requirements and began conducting our own research and market analysis of data resources that were currently available. This was then cross matched against the criteria outlined by Virgin Media,” explained Louise Clarke, Head of Recruitment Sales at Crimson.
Crimson was selected due to the company’s decades of experience recruiting for the IT sector, and previous proven record of delivering similar assignments. VirginMedia also recognised that Crimson and its consultants understood the culture of the company and could work to the tight deadline.
Crimson managed the recruitment process from conceptualisation through to the second interview phase. The process was carried out using Mercury xRM rapid recruitment software, designed and developed by Crimson. Candidates were sourced via multi-stream advertising, as well as targeted headhunting from Crimson’s own extensive candidate network.
Andy said: “Crimson searched candidates who were both active and passive within the jobs market. They fully understood our needs and we were impressed by their comprehensive exploration of candidates both within and outside of their network. Crimson effectively communicated with us throughout every stage of the recruitment process continually inviting feedback and our comments were taken on board to provide a fluid recruitment process.”
It is Crimson’s focus on building long term relationships with both clients and candidates that helped draw up a high calibre shortlist. By extensively screening candidates using group assessments, formal competency interviews and fluid intelligence tests, Crimson identified candidates who suited the culture and personality of the Virgin Media brand. Potential candidate CVs, with an accompanying summary from Crimson were presented to Virgin Media and of the twenty candidates shortlisted by Crimson sixteen were offered positions.
Andy added: “The large number of vacancies and the tight deadline meant our own resources were stretched. Crimson provided an intimate recruitment process which instilled us with high levels of trust in their expertise, with over 75% of their recommendations successful at the second stage of interview.”
After successfully meeting the objectives in Virgin Media’s brief, Crimson is continuing to provide support to Virgin Media’s recruitment campaigns.