The power of an effective EVP and hiring process.

One of the biggest reasons for partnering with Shawbrook was to help them to grow into the tech space, enabling their ambitious growth plans to support their digital transformation. They had a large number of hires to make within 2023, and again in 2024 but were struggling with the volume and being able to successfully hire within the technical remit. 

We were tasked with building a team of tech savvy, and forward-thinking tech professionals looking to leave a legacy and make Shawbrook market leaders.

In 2023 we successfully made 56 tech hires in whom we have over 90% retention for and 100% were sourced directly by us at Talent Point.

With little influence within the tech space when we joined Shawbrook a big problem was getting candidates to accept an offer when given to them. 

When we joined we were sitting at a 55% acceptance rate, meaning that ultimately half of the candidates that we offered were rejecting our offers. What have we done to change this? 
• Understood candidate motivations – deeper diving into their motivations to join Shawbrook and ensuring the Hiring Managers are aware of this to help them sell to candidates during the process.
 • Salary benchmarking – Realigned Shawbrook salaries to the wider market to be more competitive. 
• Become a trusted partner – Being able to push back on Shawbrook to get to a salary that works for the candidate and accurately represents the market value.

We have then got above 80% for 2023, and sitting at 90% in H2 2023 and 100% so far in 2024.

An immediate flag that was raised from Shawbrook was the time that it was taking to make a hire, with on average (across all tech roles from our first quarter with 
Shawbrook) 12 first interviews taking place to make an offer to 1 candidate. They had lengthy and unstructured interview processes that led to a huge amount of dropouts from candidates, and a lack of being able to assess whether someone performed well or not during the process.

What did we do?
 • Redefined the interview processes – workshopped with the hiring communities to understand their ideal hiring and restructured and planned interview processes and scorecards for assessments.

• Sit in our interviews – to understand what was happening in our interviews to ensure it aligned with what we are looking for.

Where are we now?
Structured interview processes, where we have only 3 first interviews to make 1 offer on average.

There was minimal understanding of the tech market meaning that we could have minimal impact with the candidates that are out there. Through taking our insight and reporting on it monthly we found ourselves growing to understand the make-up of the market internally, and also discovered that Campaign Briefs were one of our biggest selling points.

Campaign Briefs are being read and appreciated by tech professionals with consistent positive feedback. We are being told that it is setting us apart from the market and tells the story of Shawbrook but also how technology is at the forefront of our strategy. 1 in 4 candidates currently compliment the campaign brief and have gone as far as to say it’s what keeps them in the process over other businesses because it is so unique.

"Great collaboration between SB and TP - we saw a strong pipeline of high-quality candidates coming in for the Full-stack roles and were able to fill all open positions at pace." – Director of Engineering at Shawbrook

"The team have been great in identifying high quality candidates, many of whom have gone on to join Shawbrook." – Head of Engineering at Shawbrook

"Thank you, and I just wanted to say I really appreciate the recruitment process with this one. It’s not often you find such clear communication and straightforward processes."  Product Manager Candidate