Charlotte Beckett

The brief

BT, the UK’s number one telecommunications provider, was looking to hire entrepreneurial sales professionals.  A few years ago they  re-entered the classified advertising market with The Phone Book from BT. It’s been up there with the leading directories, and is used by 30% of the market, through not just its print version but also The Phone Book online, a CD-ROM version for  PCs and 118 500, the telephone directory enquiries service that replaced 192. As part of a nationwide sales force, these individuals would be promoting advertising solutions for BT Directories to business customers.

The challenges

• To dispel the myth that BT Directories was purely about the phone book
• To attract candidates with exceptional sales skills willing to cold call and generate their own leads
• To attract candidates with a strong new media background
• To attract a high volume of candidates for a range of locations nationwide
• To run a sustained campaign over two or three months
• To do all this on a very limited budget

The solution

A new part of BT from our perspective, the recruitment team had got stuck in a rut of spending large amounts in local papers with ever diminishing returns. Budgets would not allow them to use recruitment consultancies but there was an in-built resistance to direct sourcing based on the lack of success they were currently having.  

Combining budget, a need to see clear return on investment, the multiple locations and the need for a knowledge of new media, we recommended a fully online campaign.   This consisted of:

• A campaign website, www.btdirectoriesjobs.co.uk
• Geo targeted search engine advertising
• Job listings, banner advertising and targeted emails on Total Jobs, Jobsite, Sales Target and S1Jobs

The media was rotated through a three month period to avoid campaign fatigue,  and each phase resulted in successful hires for both positions.

Careers website screenshot

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