Large-scale recruitment events

Overview

Maintaining staffing levels within health and social care organisations remains one of our biggest challenges in Greater Manchester. 

Recent workforce transformational pilots aimed at focusing on how we recruit for roles (particularly Health Care Support Workers, admin, carers, porters, domestics and other level entry unregistered positions), have shown that engaging directly with the community provides positive results in relation to vacancies filled and return on investment.

Several organisations within GM have hosted recruitment events. This section shares examples delivered in partnership with NHS Greater Manchester and the Northern Care Alliance (NCA) in Salford (December 2022) and Oldham (January 2023).

Key challenges

  • Capacity to coordinate such events at scale
  • Changing the culture within organisations to implement this type of approach to recruiting
  • Bottle necks can be created when recruiting in larger quantities if adequate resource is not allocated after the event
  • Large events may not be an optimal approach for all candidates (e.g. neurodiverse)

Benefits

  • Reduced admin time for candidates and staff by fast-tracking individuals to the interview phase
  • Reaching people you may not have reached via traditional attraction methods
  • Greater chance of recruiting local people for local roles, a particularly important factor for entry level roles
  • Less chance of withdrawals and swifter time to hire

Case study

We have developed an implementation guide and a series of resources to support you to deliver a cross sector recruitment event.

Download key resources from the implementation guide below:

Watch the videos below for more information about the Recruitment event that took place in Salford in January 2023, hearing from partners and candidates who attended.

Useful links and resources