Exclusive high volume legal recruitment campaign with Barnsley Council

Overview

Sellick Partnership has provided recruitment services on a temporary and permanent basis to Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council for over 15 years. Barnsley Council has recently undergone a significant transformation project, including the restructuring of their Legal Services department.

As the market-leading provider of public sector legal recruitment services in the UK, we were delighted to be exclusively appointed by the Council to manage 21 permanent vacancies within the Legal Services team commencing in August 2024. 

A dedicated recruitment partner

Dedicated Recruitment Partner, Sara Robinson, Senior Manager, has worked with Barnsley Council for the last five years, providing temporary and permanent recruitment solutions across their legal department. Sara joined Sellick Partnership in September 2017 and over the past seven years has developed an extensive network within the public and not-for-profit sectors specialising within legal recruitment across Yorkshire and surrounding regions. Sara manages a team of specialist Legal Recruitment Consultants servicing the wider North East and East Midlands regions, and as such is well-positioned to manage this campaign.

Recruitment approach

To effectively manage this volume campaign, Sara worked closely with key stakeholders to create, review and develop all 21 job descriptions and person specifications for these newly created positions. Sara personally met with hiring managers to understand their requirements, focussing on the deliverables and duties for each post, enabling us to provide market insights and tailored advice on the most appropriate person specifications for each vacancy, drawing on candidate availability and market expectations. 

Sara worked closely with the Service Director for Law and Governance to ensure the proposed vacancies aligned with the intended structure for the department, understand the Employer Value Proposition and how best to promote the opportunities to the market, and agree the most appropriate sourcing and selection strategies for the campaign.

Attraction and selection strategies

A comprehensive attraction strategy was delivered, targeting active and passive candidates, delivered by a dedicated team of 4 specialist legal Consultants, including:

• Developed a bespoke candidate attraction pack to share with candidates to promote the opportunities available and provide more context and information.
• Designed and hosted a dual branded microsite on the Sellick Partnership website, including content to promote the organisation as an employer of choice as well as links to all the current vacancies with details on how to apply. 
• Well written, inclusive adverts were created and posted across board and specialist legal job boards including CV Library, Reed, Law Society Gazette, Totally Legal, Simply Law, LinkedIn.com, LinkedIn Recruiter, Sellick Partnership website and the Barnsley Council microsite. Job board performance was reviewed, and adverts were refreshed approximately every two weeks. 
• A full content and social media campaign was planned and executed by our in-house Marketing team, including video welcome and testimonial from the Service Director Law and Governance, Social Posts, and Testimonials from current employees.
• Comprehensive searches across our established talent pools, including requests for referrals and recommendations. 
• Extensive market mapping, LinkedIn Recruiter searches, and direct headhunting to engage passive talent, drawing on Sara and her team’s extensive market knowledge and specialist networks.
• Tailored telephone and video interviews, aligned to the person specification, to shortlist candidates against each vacancy.

As the Council were keen to recruit as quickly as possible, we agreed a fast-paced approach to CV shortlisting and candidates who met the agreed criteria would be submitted immediately for consideration, rather than holding shortlists back. 

Outcome

To date, we have successfully filled 15 of 22 vacancies. The three vacancies identified as being potentially difficult to fill were placed within the first three months of the campaign going live and an additional Childcare Lawyer role was hired making 22 vacancies in total.