In-house recruiting at its best

Delaware North's Kerry Richards was named Best In-House Recruiter at the 2014 In-House Recruitment Awards ceremony, beating off stiff competition from fellow professionals.

Richards leads Delaware North's United Kingdom recruitment team -- supporting the employment of 250 permanent staff, plus 4,000 staff on variable contracts throughout the company's U.K. operation. In the 12-18 months leading up to the award, Richards and her team transformed how the company recruits and manages the thousands of staff they employ on variable contracts. This has included developing a new careers website to further enhance the company’s recruitment activities and how the ‘employer’ brand is communicated.

Integral to that process was Richards and her team working with Eploy to move the company’s entire recruitment process online.

By moving it all online, Delaware North’s recruitment processes have improved significantly. The new Eploy-powered careers website has automated many of the resource-heavy elements of employing staff on variable contracts, including initial registration, response, online screening, psychometric testing to compliance paperwork gathering and reference checking.

In addition, candidates are now able to use the careers website via their mobile device. The Delaware North careers site itself was also a finalist at the In-House Recruitment Awards in the Best Careers Site category.

Richards worked with the marketing team to introduce a new advertising strategy, which includes social media profiles to communicate and engage with potential candidates and a well-crafted strategy using a clever model of job boards to attract the right candidates with the specific experiences that each role requires.

“A compelling and honest entry which highlighted all aspects of their recruitment strategy, this winner was able to share and detail their successes, challenges overcome and also their change management processes they’ve been through," the judges said of Richards. "This recruitment team has an obvious and very successful purpose within the business, which is why it has been awarded a winner.”