Guidant Global was asked by Heathrow Airport to recruit a new team of ‘Innovation Catalysts’ to support Heathrow’s expansion project. The cohort would form a branch of the Next Generation team; focusing on the third runway development whilst managing projects aimed at generating efficiency across various functions within the airport. Guidant’s relationship with Heathrow allowed us to understand the needs of the client and deliver the whole process as one integrated brand. Following the request we immediately assembled an internal project team to research various channels and solutions.
Candidate attraction campaign
Guidant’s internal project team worked closely with Heathrow to determine key criteria for successful candidates and used this information to create a campaign theme which would engage with our target audience; whether they were active or passive job seekers.
Guidant came up with the idea of ‘concepts of the future’ which included grabbing attention with key phrases such as teleportation, travelling to Mars and hover cars. We brought the ideas to life through creating animated artwork to use in our online advertising activity.
Guidant attracted over 300 applications in total for this role, with the most successful adverts proving to be from social media adverts and a TotalJobs-branded advert.
Gamification
After reviewing over 300 applications, Guidant and Heathrow shortlisted the best thirty candidates to take through to the next stage of the recruitment process – gamification. We used the ‘Theme Park Hero’ assessment game built by Revelian. The ‘Theme Park Hero’ game assesses candidates using four different puzzles of increasing complexity. This provides reliable and valid data on a candidate’s ability in a variety of areas including; problem solving, information processing style, decision making and their capability to cope under pressure. Having surveyed candidates, the use of gamification in the recruitment process identifies an innovative employer, as illustrated by the 93% of respondents who, after taking the test, said they perceived Heathrow to be an innovative employer. The feedback from the gamification assessment also shows a clear preference for a gamification assessment over a traditional psychometric test.
The outcome
With regards to delivering a great candidate experience, when candidates were surveyed there was also a unanimous view of having had a positive recruitment experience.
All candidates highlighted their particular enjoyment of both the gamification assessment and the assessment day.
Commercially, Guidant also saved Heathrow £15,000 in placement fees in comparison to a traditional route to market, at a saving of 10% per hire. Whilst a traditional recruitment process would have had agencies supplying candidates based on a broad job specification, we were able to give Heathrow an innovative and market leading recruitment process, with a targeted marketing campaign, the use of gamification and the running of a bespoke assessment centre.
Guidant is always looking to create true partnerships with clients, where we work in collaboration to deliver exceptional results. This process illustrates the positive effects of approaching recruitment in this way.
Read the full customer success story
To find out the full ins and outs of our Innovation Catalyst recruitment campaign download the full customer success story.
