Case Study: Hiring the right person for the job and saving our client's time spent on recruitment

The situation

A long-term client of ours approached us to support them on a specific recruitment challenge. They were looking to urgently hire a QA Manager but during a global pandemic, time for everyone was limited. He was tasked with ensuring that his whole team were set up correctly from home, whilst continuing to hit all project milestone and targets –finding time to review CV’s and host interviews was impossible.

In the same breath, he stressed the importance of having this role filled sooner rather than later. As it stood, several team members were having to pick up the slack which was stretching the entire department.

The Hobson Prior solution

I took the time to explain to him the functionality of our on-demand video interview service and how we could run a tailored recruitment process that would suit his specific needs that he would be able to view the progress of this in his own time. Essentially, he would spend less time recruiting and still be able to secure the right person.

Working with the client to determine, in detail, what he was looking for; we agreed on specific interview questions, which we uploaded into the video interview platform, including a short 45-second from the hiring manager that would introduce applicants to the company and its culture.

Three members of the Hobson Prior QA team focused on searching our network of relevant candidates, with one specifically headhunting new talent for this position. We qualified people based on the manager’s specific requirements, then shared the job spec and short clip from the manager to make sure they had sufficient information. We shortlisted ten relevant candidates for the position and held a project meeting to decide the top five candidates to take to interview –we ended up interviewing six.

To add some consistency, I personally held the six video interviews across the course of a day. I rejected two applicants following the interviews, kept one back up and shared the top three with the manager via our video platform – he then had the freedom to review the videos in his own time, which he did over the weekend.

The result

Our client was able to make sufficient time to hold two final stage video interviews via our platform with the top candidates. He was extremely impressed with both candidates and released an offer to one of them.

This meant that within ten business days of the client briefing us on the role we had an accepted offer from the candidate who then started roughly a week after contract acceptance.

Hobson Prior has now become this client’s first choice agency for QA and is in discussions to roll out our on-demand video interview service into other functions within their business.