CHALLENGE
Virgin Money’s brief to us: find me Harry Potter, a creative genius who can come along and change banking. Someone from outside banking that we couldn’t attract through the normal processes.
APPROACH
How do you recruit an executive from a completely different sector? And how do you reach them in the first place? Above all, by making the front pages, not the banking job section. So we set out to create a headline-grabbing experience and generate PR and noise in the right places – starting with a pilot of the assessment experience. And that experience was ‘The world’s most creative job interview’, a hybrid of immersive theatre and robust assessment. Building on psychological principles, it set candidates tasks that engaged as thoroughly as they tested.
“The thing I love about PeopleScout is they have that really interesting blend of a robust approach to assessment and the creative ability to think differently.” – Head of Resourcing, Virgin Money
RESULTS
Alongside coverage in the usual HR publications, we earned high-profile media coverage in titles like The Evening Standard, City A.M., Campaign, Marketing Magazine and Brand Republic, with a combined circulation of around 30 million. Ten outstanding candidates were chosen for the ‘interview’. Which all led to the discovery of the successful applicant, Dhiraj Mukherjee, a founder of the music application Shazam, and a truly creative entrepreneur. And the new assessment approach has ushered in a legacy beyond a new Head of Innovation. From one niche role, we’ve now scaled up the approach to be used nationally across all volume hiring.
