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Brighton and Hove City Council

ecruit delivered a 200% increase in volume of qualified applications and reduced our cost per hire to just £199!

Talent Acquisition Manager

Brighton & Hove City Council

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Saved in recruitment costs

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Vacancies filled

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Average cost per hire

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Avg candidates per campaign

The Company

Recruiting in the public sector presents unique challenges for local councils, who must fill a wide range of roles amid ongoing skills shortages and stretched internal resources.

Ecruit supports over 30 local authorities with their job board advertising and hiring; by far the biggest challenge is the limited hiring budgets which have already been stretched to the max.

This case study explores how Brighton and Hove City Council overcame these recruitment hurdles using ecruit’s fixed-price recruitment advertising service.

Brighton and Hove City Council typically advertise between 600 – 800 vacancies a year across white, blue and grey colour sectors.

They sourced candidates via an internal talent acquisition team that utilized their own website, an internal candidate database and also Indeed and local job centres.

They face significant challenges in attracting the right volume of candidates to their vacancies, with particular challenges in skills shortage areas such as child and adult social care.

Ecruit reports similar findings in other councils that we help, with key challenges falling into these areas:

  • Insufficient applicants for jobs
  • High recruitment costs with limited budget
  • Time-consuming administrative processes
  • Not enough internal resource to deal with vacancy volumes

The Problem

Councils often find it difficult to attract applicants due to a growing preference among candidates for private-sector roles (and salaries) and a shortage of specialised skills.

The council faced three key challenges:

  1. Maximising Return on Investment (ROI): With limited hiring budgets, how can we make our budget work harder?
  2. Increasing Applicant Volume: How can we increase volume and quality of candidates, without spending more money?
  3. Reducing Time Spent on Administration: Where can we find efficiencies in the job advertising process to free up time for our already stretched team?

These issues had a ripple effect, putting pressure on other parts of the council and, ultimately, on the services provided to the local community.

The Solution

After exploring various job boards and recruitment agencies, the Brighton and Hove City council chose ecruit’s advertising service to help improve their candidate inflow and streamline their recruitment advertising process. The decision was driven by several key benefits:

  • Cost-Efficiency: Their jobs were posted across over 100 major job boards for one low-cost price.
  • Increased Applicant Quantity and Quality: Exposure to a much bigger talent pool increased the volume of qualified candidates applying.
  • Reduced Administrative Burden: ecruit’s service ensured job adverts were written professionally and posted on all boards within 24 hours of going live.
  • Dedicated Support: An account manager optimised job adverts weekly, providing analytics and performance reporting.
  • Proven Experience: ecruit’s track record with other councils gave them confidence in the service.

The Results

By using ecruit’s fixed-price advertising service, the council significantly improved its recruitment outcomes while saving substantial costs. Key achievements included:

  1. Lower Costs and Higher ROI: Ecruit reduced Brighton and Hove’s cost per sponsored advert to just £199.
  2. Increased Volume of Qualified Applicants: The council reported a 200% increase in volume of qualified applications.
  3. Enhanced Quality of Candidates: This resulted in reduction of average time to hire from 8 weeks to 6 weeks.
  4. Drop out rate reduction: Advertising in new talent pools reduced candidate drop out rate across the hiring process.
  5. Significant Time Savings: Centralising applicants and using candidate scoring based on relevance greatly reduced administrative time.

Conclusion

By streamlining your recruitment advertising process, not only can you make big savings on purchasing job board media but you can improve your key hiring metrics such as time to hire and cost per hire.

Are you ready to evolve your recruitment advertising processes?

Book a free no obligation call with one of our expert consultants today to learn how ecruit can help revolutionise your approach to recruitment.

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