Like many public sector organisations, educational bodies often struggle to find candidates. Factor in tight budgets, seasonal hiring, and competing with neighbouring schools – it’s hard work to grab the attention of qualified teachers and support staff.
This Winter, Jobs Go Public worked with University Schools Trust (UST) to take a new approach to candidate attraction. We spent two months collaborating on a performance marketing campaign to:
- Build awareness of the University Schools Trust employer brand
- Find quality candidates in a competitive location for education roles
- Bring in more applications for the recruiting team’s budget
Between January and March this resulted in a 215% increase in applications across UST’s vacancies.
About University Schools Trust
University Schools Trust is a London-based partnership of schools, universities, and public and private sector bodies. Founded in 2016, UST is committed to inclusive, high-quality education for their students in Tower Hamlets and Greenwich.
Their ethos emphasises collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement. This is achieved through partnerships, research initiatives, and a culture of shared learning among their staff.
UST's hiring challenge
Before working with Jobs Go Public, UST were dealing with a frustration faced by many employers. They were spending a lot of money on traditional recruitment methods, with few quality candidates to show for it.
Due to UST’s location, they compete with many commutable London-based schools for the same types of roles. Further, many candidates were previously unaware that UST is not a university establishment. In fact, they offer a wide variety of vacancies in the education sector.
UST’s hiring team wanted to try a new, more innovative approach to candidate attraction. So we suggested performance marketing. The main objectives of the campaign were:
- To find quality candidates
- Increase UST’s reach in a competitive job market
- Build awareness of all of UST’s job opportunities
- Provide the hiring team with support and confidence to engage candidates
Jobs Go Public's performance marketing solution
Jobs Go Public adopted a highly targeted performance marketing approach to transform UST’s recruitment strategy.
According to Eploy, only 10% of recruitment teams use a performance-based strategy to attract candidates. This means many employers are missing out on this innovative solution to low candidate volume.
But what is it?
A performance marketing campaign from Jobs Go Public combines a bespoke mix of paid advertising platforms to target the right candidates at the right moment. Our marketing team take a hands-on approach from start to finish, providing expertise such as:
- Research about candidates’ online job search behaviour
- Daily campaign monitoring and optimisation
- Advert copywriting and testing
- Collaborating with the hiring team on application quality
- Regular ROI reports
The University Schools Trust campaign
Jobs Go Public worked with UST to provide a tailored marketing mix for their education roles, while also building awareness of their employer brand.
Following consultation, we promoted UST’s roles using:
- A branded vacancy listing page powered by Jobs Go Public
- Search engine marketing
- Programmatic advertising
- LinkedIn outreach
- Email outreach to the Jobs Go Public network
This mix allowed us to place adverts directly in front of active jobseekers as they started their search, while raising awareness of the full profile of UST vacancies.
Our Resourcing team also worked with hiring managers to provide expert advice on candidate experience and recruitment best practices.
The results
Our campaign allowed UST to increase the volume of roles they advertised for their recruitment budget by 57%. Performance marketing activity compared to the previous advertising period for these roles also resulted in:
In just two months, University Schools Trust saw a huge transformation in interest for their roles, capitalising on active jobseekers by promoting their jobs where candidates were searching.
Moreover, the campaign had a lasting impact on awareness of the University Schools Trust brand, with UST noting an increase in traffic to their website as well as their vacancy page.
This demonstrates the effectiveness of this highly targeted strategy to increase reach in a tight labour market.
Switching from a traditional approach to performance marketing, UST felt more confident to compete with other schools in London hiring from the same candidate pool. Ultimately, this led to an improved ROI for their advertising spend.
What the client said about their campaign:
"Jobs Go Public took the time to get to know our organisation to make recommendations and provide their expertise every step of the way. The team was instrumental in guiding us through the process, going above and beyond to ensure our success.
We received detailed reporting and regular meetings from Khyron throughout the campaign that were invaluable in tracking our progress and optimising our strategy. We saw a great increase in our brand awareness and the level of applications coming through for our vacancies. We’re incredibly grateful for their support and would highly recommend the Jobs Go Public team."
- Chris Bloor, Marketing & Comms Manager