Best Recruitment Experience

Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital - Integrated Local Services
Transparent interviews

" The Neighbourhood nursing team had a high B6 vacancy rate despite ongoing recruitment efforts, this highlighted a need to change our recruitment process. A local B5 survey was conducted exploring barriers in applying for promotions, there were various reason for not applying for senior post but there was a recurrent theme of fear of interviewing and failure. We proposed a 6 month trial of transparent interview where we offered 70% of the interview questions 24 hours in advance to allow the candidates time to prepare and help elevate the stress and fear of interviewing and the outcome was fantastic."

HCRG Care Group
Talent Attraction Strategy review and refresh

" We set out to tackle challenges in recruiting and retaining colleagues by refreshing our Talent Attraction Strategy. We conducted research, developed new tactics and delivered several new projects which have seen our vacancy factor and turnover rates reduce and our colleague satisfaction increase over the past 12 months."

Leeds and York Partnership NHS Trust on behalf of West Yorkshire Integrated Care System
CREST - Community Rehabilitation Enhanced Support Team

" We needed to recruit high quality , motivated staff who demonstrated values that aligned with the Trust’s values. As a young programme and new service we needed to make our offer very appealing to compete with other Trusts regionally and promoted our culture of coproduction. A key challenge is being a new and relatively unknown service in the region. We thought through our recruitment and retention process from start to finish and now have a robust attraction, interview, induction and feedback process to build on."

Leicestershire Partnership Trust
Healthy Together 0-19 student health visitor and school nurse recruitment

" The past two years had seen a reduction in successful candidates for the posts of student Health Visitors & School Nurses with our health visitor places falling below capacity and school nursing places not being recruited to; therefore we wanted to increase our numbers of successful candidates ensuring a high quality assurance process to recruit the best candidates as well as advanced planning to develop our own workforce to ensure those who wanted to develop met the HEI entry requirements. we worked with HR and communication colleagues as well as our patient experience team."

Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust
Reducing nursing vacancies, whilst improving the candidate experience and time to hire.

"In August 2022, our nursing vacancy rate was 13% and pre-employment checks were taking 44 days, which was resulting in a high bank/agency spend. Hiring managers and candidates had a negative perception of the service. We collaborated with key stakeholders to implement nursing recruitment events, targeted marketing campaigns and utilised technology to improve the recruitment experience. As a result of our work, in March this year our nursing vacancy rate was 1.41% and pre-employment checks were taking 14.1 days leading to £10m cost saving on bank/agency spend. 92% of candidates now rate their recruitment experience as Excellent or Good. "

South Warwickshire University NHS Foundation Trust
Explore Nursing Challenge Badge

"In June 2023, NHS England reported a vacancy rate of 10.6% (43,339 vacancies). As part of the NextGen Nurse Programme work stream, we developed a Girl Guide Badge that is available for completion by 300K active Girlguide members in the UK with a further 56,882 on the waiting list. Future plans include Scouts with over 400,000 members in the UK and Schools/Duke of Edinburgh award. Challenges included capacity, developing a badge with age applicable tasks, engagement from local units and funding. I am still collating data but initial outcomes show a 150% increase in interest in a career in Nursing. "

The Christie NHS Foundation Trust
Sector Work-based Academy Programme (SWAP)

"The Christie, Trafford College and Department of Work and Pensions are committed to our Widening Participation Strategy. We aimed to recruit from our local communities to increase recruitment effectiveness and promote The Christie Brand. We established a Sector Work-based Academy Programme (SWAP). When recruiting for multiple roles, such as Healthcare Assistant, Domestic Assistant and Portering, Catering, and Administrative we work with the DWP to identify potential recruits. The Trafford College deliver a tailored two-week accredited Level 1 Employability Skills programme to maximise readiness and confidence. To date 90% of participants guaranteed an interview of which 38% secured a role."

University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire
Newly qualified nurse recruitment process

"Duplication and waste leading to poor candidate experience was identified in the recruitment process of newly qualified nurses from local university. A System wide collaborative approach was developed and implemented, including joint recruitment events, guaranteed job offer on qualification, NO interview, NO assessment, shortened application form, streamlined co-ordinated allocation process, robust communication with candidate. Reluctance to adopt changes of processes from some members Outcomes included reduction in duplication of applicants across system, enabling accurate pipeline numbers to manage vacancies, reduced waste for candidates and resourcing teams , improved student experience whilst ensuring they obtained jobs in area of preference "

University Hospitals Sussex
Collaborative approach to HCSW recruitment with Department of Work and Pensions

" In 2022, the University Hospitals Sussex(UHSx) faced a 24.8% vacancy rate and a new hospital construction increased the demand for healthcare assistants. To address this, we launched a recruitment was initiative in Brighton, starting modestly at the Jobcentre and expanding through job fairs. Our focus was on inclusivity, ensuring we attracted neurodiverse individuals, refugees, and the long-term unemployed. This value-based recruitment emphasized cultural fit and created a supportive environment for discussing health conditions and personal circumstances. Our efforts transformed the recruitment process, resulting in a diverse and vibrant workforce, and positively impacting the community and reduced vacancies to less."