Shawbrook Bank: Harnessing Social Media to Increase Referrals

Since 2016, Cielo has provided a Total Talent Acquisition model to Shawbrook Bank in the UK, hiring for c.200 roles (permanent, fixed-term contract, contractor and temporary) per year across all ten of Shawbrook’s locations.

The Challenge
Over the last few years, the specialist UK bank Shawbrook has grown and changed rapidly. With a reputation for disrupting the market, in 2016 the Shawbrook team appointed Cielo as their Total Talent Acquisition partner to help create a talent strategy that would prepare them for the future and enable them to push forwards with their growth plans.

Shawbrook wanted to reduce expenditure on external agency use, but also (following a successful external careers site relaunch) decided to focus on increasing the percentage of hires filled by referrals, which stood at just 12.5% in 2015.

The task for Cielo was therefore to develop a strategy to help Hiring Managers build the sustainable internal communities and talent pools that would in turn improve the referral hire ratio for the long term and further reduce cost per hire.

The Solution
Cielo and Shawbrook concluded that one of the best ways to increase referrals was to improve the external brand image of Senior Management. This could be done by helping modernise the group’s mindset, encouraging the use of social media in a more engaging way.

In partnership with Cielo’s Brand & Communications team, a number of areas were targeted for further development in order to boost the social media reach of management figures and improve internal vacancy visibility. Cielo’s Director of Brand, Digital & Communications then prepared and delivered a group presentation to over 50 senior management staff on the topic of “Building Your Personal Brand to Attract the Best Talent.”

This focused on encouraging the creation of “personal brand mantras” among senior management, focusing on adding detail and personality to online profiles, and helping those who had always been reluctant to engage to “dip their toes in the water” and get involved in professional networks (both digital and physical). A detailed guide was presented on how best to set personal strategies and build networks and influence – also explaining how this would prove beneficial to attracting and sourcing talent.

The Results
Shawbrook, with its bold new Employer Value Proposition developed in partnership with Cielo, is now recognised more widely in the market. Thanks to our role in encouraging the use of social media, senior leaders now also truly understand the part they can play in the recruitment process by acting as brand ambassadors. Referrals have increased substantially.

As of the end of September (Q3) 2017, 30% of placements in the year to date came from referrals – up from 12.5% in 2015, and 14% in 2016.

Thanks to the focused training provided, and the introduction of a more structured and disciplined social media policy, senior managers now understand the benefits of an online presence, how they should be describing the organisation, and what their role is in helping attract and retain top talent for the future.