Caldmore Taverns
Recruiting against the grain
The Challenge
Caldmore Taverns, with a network of 20 pubs in North West England, faced a recruitment challenge in a tough market. They needed an evergreen campaign to attract their ideal landlord. The goal was to streamline their recruitment process, enhancing efficiency, and to significantly boost the quantity and quality of applications.
Services Used
Context
The UK hospitality sector, particularly public houses, is currently navigating a complex recruitment landscape. The challenge is twofold: vacancy rates are 72% higher than pre-pandemic levels, while there’s a simultaneous demand for scarce dynamic skill sets. As a result, pub groups and multi-site retailers must deeply understand their ideal operator profiles, re-envision the industry’s allure, and develop streamlined recruitment pathways that effectively attract and convert a new era of candidates.
The Journey
An autonomous and rewarding operator business model combined with beautiful heritage sites, Caldmore Taverns was well equipped to pivot in a changing landscape. To reinvent the businesses recruitment strategy, we looked to re-align their approach to new talent acquisition with a content-first digital recruitment funnel.
Firstly, we delved into the traits of successful operators within the group, identifying entrepreneurialism, resilience and creative thinking as key attributes. We recognised that a diverse skill set was more valuable than conventional on-trade experience. With the ‘great resignation’ of 2022 reshaping the employment landscape, an authentic ‘be your own boss’ message had never been so appealing. So, we pivoted to exploring unconventional spaces where ex-corporated played, aiming to engage this new generation of recruits. This strategy, deeply rooted in understanding the needs and motivations of potential candidates, was carefully crafted to attract the ideal talent, often from the most unexpected places.
“We recognised that a diverse skill set was more valuable than conventional on-trade experience.”
Next, it was time to deep-dive into the Caldmore Taverns brand story, values, culture and brand promise that could be made to a new era of operators. From here, the outcomes of the brand team’s psychometric analysis combined with the newly defined Caldmore Taverns brand strategy became the starting point for campaign messaging and a suite of bespoke content to be developed.
We developed a recruitment funnel using Typeform, combining the best elements of a traditional CV with an application form. This user-friendly approach was designed to strike the right ‘time investment’ balance, to encourage applications from a broader pool of prospects. The software seamlessly integrated with Caldmore Taverns’ existing infrastructure. Automations allowed for a significant reduction in manual inputs, saving the team time.
A key focus of this campaign was establishing clear KPIs across the entire funnel. Initially, we analysed ‘top-line’ content performance metrics like impressions and click-through rates, guiding our content messaging refinement. Next, we fine-tuned the application form to introduce automated candidate scoring and understood the correlation between application completion and interview attendance rates.
The final stage centred on tracking successful new hires, allowing us to trace an applicant’s journey from their first video view to measuring new hire retention. This comprehensive, end-to-end approach not only made the process efficient but also definitive in its positive commercial impact.
The Results
Not only did the campaign recruit great people but they have stayed and thrived, contributing to the incredible growth seen by Caldmore Taverns against the backdrop of a tough trading environment. The evergreen nature of the recruitment funnel means that Caldmore Taverns can focus their attentions on running the best public houses without the constant threat of talent sourcing.
Increase of Applicants
New Hire
Retention
Successful
Placements
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