Roles in Social Care Case Studies & Testimonials
Permanent roles in social care
Background Information
Working as the Resource Partner as part of the Together for Children and Learners partnership, OUK led on the recruitment to 32 vacancies for Children and Learners Strategic Advisers (CLSAs) who would be appointed to Government Office Regions.
Purpose
CLSAs appointed needed to have operated at a minimum of Assistant Director level in a Children’s Services Related role (in Social Care, Education or Health). The type of person needed to have insight into and credibility in the Children’s Services Arena. The focus was to attract aspirant Directors who would see this role as a step in their career.
Aims and Objectives
From contract award in November 2009 to ‘Go Live’ in April 2010, 32 high quality CLSAs needed to be appointed.
Established Practice
All recruitment activity was managed by our experienced resourcing division, working closely with other partners to ensure we had extensive geographical spread in order to attract a pool of senior professionals who could between them, demonstrate credibility across all five ECM outcomes.
We worked closely with stakeholders within Local Authorities and Government Offices to ensure that we were working in partnership (namely Directors of Childrens Services and Directors for Children and Learners).
We recognised the high risk factor in ensuring that the service was fully resourced from day one and so stressed our confidence in resourcing the right people at the right time in the right place, we undertook ‘at risk’ activity prior to contract award. We offered a variety of employment contracts to maximise the potential number of applicants.
Our blend of contract types such as part time and flexible working further enhanced our ability to attract applicants from a wide audience.
Our Recruitment Plan was divided into 4 main areas: Attraction, Response management, Selection and Deployment. Within these areas, our activities were as follows:
- Role design and development of job descriptions, person specification and competency framework
- Recruitment Materials design – appropriately branded across the partnership and DCSF.
- Attraction – The Push /Pull Approach – advertising campaigns in national press and using our networks and links for Search and Selection purposes.
- Key Attraction messages – imaginatively branding the service to be an ‘employer of choice’, highlighting the benefits of working in such a role.
- Involvement of key Stakeholders – at role design and throughout selection process.
- Support to candidates throughout process – to retain their interest.
- Design of assessment centre and interview programme.
- Full vetting process.
- Induction plans linked to recruitment timescales so that a seamless ‘go live’ was in place.
Methodology and Tools
The tools used were specifically designed for the assignment
Conclusions and Recommendations
The desired number of high calibre CLSAs were appointed in time with excellent feedback from DCS and DCL colleagues.
Difficulties
Due to exceedingly tight project management and 2 OUK staff being deployed onto this contract on a full time basis, this ran very smoothly.
NB: Unfortunately, due to the disbandment of Government Offices, these CLSA roles no longer exist.
Transferable Benefits
The use of high standard Recruitment Process Outsource tools which can be used to underpin any further recruitment projects. This has already been used in our projects with voluntary organisations.
Testimonials:
For this piece of work, our client (Serco and DCSF) scored us 5/5.
Some comments are below:
“Full complement of staff appointed and those recruited spoke very highly of process and ‘after –care’ which had very positive impact on early reputation of service. Good work behind the scenes to source strong candidates and to bring to interview only credible candidates. All processes ran smoothly in a complex nationwide recruitment campaign, assessment process and interviews – everyone in the right place at the right time and feeling as relaxed as possible. Understanding and accommodating of the schedules of some very senior colleagues who needed fitting into the processes. Positive feedback on process even from unsuccessful candidates – which is very important given some high profile and influential people as
applicants. Strong reputation at DfE and amongst Government Office
colleagues and amongst the service itself. Especially marked as a similar campaign run by another service outside TfCL in similar parameters was much less successful”
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