Recruitment
L
ondon Midland is investing in direct recruitment to source high calibre candidates to join teams across its network. The company is focusing on advertising directly through the website www.
londonmidlandcareers.com coupled with trade publications and social media. Alongside this, the company offers its employees financial incentives when they recommend someone who is subsequently appointed.
By owning the recruitment process from the outset, London Midland is able to create deeper engagement with potential candidates. Managing the employer brand directly, the company can be clear about the offer, consistent in its messages throughout and can create a better experience for applicants. Direct advertising also builds a strong presence for the company in the local job market subsequently attracting higher calibre candidates. The company sees this as an investment for the future helping to create a pipeline of prospective candidates. Unsuccessful candidates for one job can be successful applicants for future roles.
There are also significant cost savings in this approach, provided the internal team is geared up to build and run a direct recruitment process. And the company is already seeing the return on its investment. Francis Thomas was recently hired by direct recruitment as head of communications. Having started his career with British Rail, Francis had moved on to gain senior level communications experience in other sectors. Francis saw the ad on the company’s website and applied directly. From first contact to job offer took just three weeks.
London Midland recently embarked on a large scale recruitment campaign for train crew management positions ranging from head of drivers to area operations manager to
operations performance analyst. The company took a direct recruitment approach using Rail Professional and online sites. With around 200 responses, two vacancies have been filled and interviews are underway for the remaining roles. And, in this issue of the magazine London Midland is advertising for customer-focused managers to join the senior team. Other direct recruitment initiatives include a partnership with Birmingham City Council. Having helped Network Rail to recruit locally, the City Council Employment team was ideally placed to support London Midland in finding strong candidates for roles at Birmingham New Street.
Another successful partnership for London Midland is with
Career Transition Partnership. This organisation helps former members of the armed forces to find work. Many of their applicants have been taken on as trainee conductors and drivers. Michelle Evans, resourcing manager, talking about London Midland’s investment in direct recruitment said: ‘As a business that serves the local communities, we want to be known as a good local employer. By owning the recruitment process from start to finish, we are better able to manage our employment brand with prospective employees.
‘Key to finding strong candidates is a close relationship with our recruitment advertising agency, TMPW. It has to understand our vision for the brand and be able to translate that into compelling, well-designed job ads that attract the right candidates. This then needs to be underpinned internally at London Midland by a strong and consistent recruitment process with good management and systems.
‘However we will still always need recruitment agencies.
Where they can really add value to the recruitment process is in filling niche roles or by having a pool of immediately available candidates.’
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Page 134 October 2013
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