Challenges

Origin Spinal Injury Care are a national provider of live-in homecare for adults living with spinal injuries across the UK. In the wake of Brexit and covid-19, the social care sector is facing it’s biggest recruitment challenge to date: we were brought in to help fill top-of-funnel recruitment activity, signposting and attracting the right candidates to their dedicated careers website and online application form.

We needed to attract candidates from across the globe, but the requirements of the job meant we needed to attract a very specific applicant profile. We needed to utilise digital to get the job in front of potential candidates across the UK, mainland Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and kicked off the campaign as the world manoeuvred out of the pandemic at varying speeds.

Solution

We started with persona research, nailing down exactly who we were targeting and working our what their motivations and drivers were, and importantly, where we’d be able to get in front of them, both during active job-hunting (Google search) and in their downtime (Google display, retargeting and social media).

From here, we developed a strong two-phase approach: phase one (“Even More Me”), was about focusing on the people the applicants would be caring for, pairing compelling copywriting with powerful images and graphic design to develop strong brand identity and provide a real emotional sell for the role. The end result was an empowering ad campaign that talked about enhancing people’s lives.

Phase two (On My Terms) was all about the candidate and why the job would enhance the candidates lives. The creative this time round sat cohesively with the first round of the campaign in style, but the images were much more focussed on mirroring the potential applicants, allowing them to imagine themselves in the role.

Impact

The two-phase approach worked: in the quarter following the launch of phase 2, we saw a 37% rise in engagements with the job ads and a 38% rise in brand impressions across social media. Perhaps most importantly, our audience demographic has shifted and we are now reaching people who matched the persona types we need for the job.

With immediate recruitment worries reduced, we’re able to look ahead at filling the recruitment funnels long term, working alongside an independent recruitment agency and the internal Origin team to boost applicants from the right people in order to have the capacity to grow their client base further.