Virgin Money: An Executive Search Experience Like No Other

Situation

Virgin Money turned to PEopleScout and our industry-leading creative team to find them a new Head of Innovation.

Their brief to us:

Find us Harry Potter, a creative genius who can come along and change banking. Someone from outside the financial services sector that we wouldn’t attract through the normal processes.

Solution

How do you recruit an executive from a completely different sector? And how do you reach them in the first place?

Above all, by making the front pages, just not in the finance section.

So we set out to create a headline-grabbing experience that would generate publicity and noise in the right places.

And that experience was, “The world’s most creative job interview,” a hybrid of immersive theater and robust job assessment. Building on psychological principles, it set candidates tasks that engaged as thoroughly as they tested.

Results

Alongside coverage in the usual HR publications, we earned high-profile media coverage in The Evening Standard, City A.M., Campaign, Marketing Magazine, Brand Republic and more, reaching a combined circulation of around 30 million people.

Ten outstanding candidates were chosen for the “interview,” which led to the discovery of the successful applicant, Dhiraj Mukherjee, a founder of the music application Shazam, and a truly creative entrepreneur.

The new assessment approach has ushered in a legacy beyond a new Head of Innovation. From one niche role, we’ve now scaled up the approach to be used nationally across all volume hiring.

“The thing I love about PeopleScout is they have that really interesting blend of a robust approach to assessment and the creative ability to think differently.”

Head of Resourcing, Virgin Money