Citizens Advice is a vital national service set up as a network of 316 independent charities throughout the United Kingdom that give free, confidential information and advice to assist people with money, legal, consumer and other problems. They are nimble and adaptable, reacting to huge changes in policy and legislation such as Universal Credit, Brexit and the COVID-19 response to provide accurate and informed advice to the people who are affected most.
As trusted partners Prospectus were approached by Citizen’s Advice to support them on 2 Advertising and Shortlisting Campaigns;
– Help To Claim – With the introduction of Universal Credit, Citizens Advice needed to build capacity within some of their local citizens advice regions to provide support to people in the early stages of their claim. This campaign was designed to attract and recruit 63 positions in varying numbers across the country, ensuring the positions had the highest possible exposure. An advertising campaign was delivered to target locations widely enough to ensure suitable applications for the areas most needed. The campaign was cost effective, on brand and wide spread and attracted over 2,500 applicants. Prospectus then supported Citizens Advice through a shortlisting service to manage the volume of applications by filtering and identifying top talent for roles ranging from Head Of to Officer level across Birmingham, Cardiff, London and Leeds.
– “Head Of” Campaign – More recently, Prospectus have supported Citizens Advice with the shortlisting and advertising of 5 key roles, (Head of Member Relations, Head of Network Strategy, Head of Funded Services (x2) and Head of Advice Quality). These positions were vital to the ongoing future success of the organisation, giving them the capacity to adapt and future proof their services. A comprehensive on-brand advertising campaign was developed to attract candidates from within and beyond the not for profit sector, and to target talent with developed and transferable skills to join the organisation which resulted in 235 applicants from across the country. Prospectus attracted and assessed the suitability of candidates to find the best talent for these crucial requirements.
Following two successful recruitment campaigns, Citizens Advice have now recruited to all of these positions in the swift and efficient manner desired. They were pertinent and vibrant campaigns with a clear requirement for specialist expertise and an aspiration for diverse candidate shortlists to help tackle current and important issues. For both campaigns, the Prospectus Talent Attraction Team carefully navigated the best locations for advertisements and how to best utilise the spend and budgets to ensure the most specific and relevant audiences were targeted. Both processes were completed with tailored and adaptable processes, to time and within budgets, matching with our internal interview capacity to meet the desired start dates for Citizens Advice.
“We knew we could rely on Prospectus to help us successfully fill the posts for both of these critical campaigns. From the start they were proactive and leant their expertise to developing recruitment strategies. Our senior leadership team were impressed with how they used their existing knowledge of Citizens Advice to develop targeted and effective advertisement campaigns. Throughout the process they kept Citizens Advice informed, were able to assure the required quality of applicants were engaging and conducted the Shortlisting exercise. It would not have been possible for our senior leadership team to work through all the applicants and it was much more efficient for them to work through the shortlisted applicants selected by Prospectus. The outcome was that a high quality of candidates were interviewed and all posts were filled with excellent appointees that will make great contributions to Citizens Advice.”