Comprehensive support for recruitment assessment centre leads to 20 hires

"The partnership with JVP has provided superb value for us and has really taken our employer branding to the next level."

Client Profile

Twycross Zoo is an award-winning conservation charity and rapidly growing visitor attraction. Currently attracting 580,000 visitors each year, the Zoo is at a very exciting stage of development as they hit 5 years into a 20-year, £55million masterplan focused on developing new habitats for a refreshed animal collection and enhanced visitor experience.

The Scenario

With sunnier weather, the school holidays, and a pair of Sumatran Tigers fast approaching, Twycross Zoo were bracing for another record-breaking summer period.

Key to ensuring all visitors have a memorable visit from start to finish are the Zoo's Visitor Experience Assistants, and with tens of thousands of people due to visit within just a few weeks, Twycross Zoo needed to recruit more than 20 seasonal customer service superstars to make sure this summer is unforgettable for visitors.

With such a high volume of recruits needed, Twycross Zoo opted to host a recruitment assessment evening enabling the leadership team to assess how the applicants interact with each other, and conduct interviews to ensure suitability. With so many new starters required in a short time frame - the Zoo needed to attract 40-50 people to the recruitment assessment evening to ensure a sufficient talent pool available for the selection of the very best candidates.

Having been in partnership with Twycross Zoo for over a year, working with the in-house HR team to attract, assess and manage applicants for all roles spanning entry level positions to heads of departments – on the 7th of June 2019 JVP Group set to work on supporting the Zoo with the mammoth task of attracting, filtering, telephone screening, and inviting 40-50 applicants to the Zoo's recruitment assessment evening on the 4th of July 2019

The Solution

JVP immediately started work on a comprehensive 3 stage process:

• Stage 1: Attracting candidates

  The skilled and knowledgeable recruitment marketing team at JVP commenced a comprehensive recruitment marketing strategy including:

  • - A carefully crafted employer branded job advert
  • - Promoting the vacancy across multiple job boards, including leading, specialist and regional sites
  • - Marketing the opportunities across social media, utilising eye-catching videos, images and GIFs, and engaging posts
  • - Leaving no stone unturned when it came to sharing the vacancy from sending it to local universities, to posting into numerous localised social media groups

• Stage 2: Assessing the suitability of applicants

  • - JVP's team of recruitment specialists proactively reviewed all applications, highlighting CVs that matched Twycross' essential criteria
  • - Once applications were filtered, pre-screening calls were conducted to complete a checklist, with a series of questions asked to applicants to minimise issues when it came to face to face interviews at the recruitment assessment evening.
  • - If the applicant was assessed as potentially suitable from the pre-screening call, the JVP team took care of the invitation process onto the recruitment assessment evening - both verbally and in writing.

• Stage 3: Managing the recruitment process

  From start to finish JVP managed the entire process working closely with the HR team at Twycross Zoo. From managing all phone and email recruitment enquiries on behalf of the Zoo through a dedicated recruitment helpline number and email inbox, to sending out reminder emails about the recruitment assessment evening to selected applicants, and sending feedback to unsuccessful applicants – the JVP team took care of all the time-consuming recruitment administration work, whilst ensuring a seamless candidate experience upholding the Zoo's strong employer brand reputation.

The Results