South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust’s combination of targeted social media and outdoor advertising has seen a dramatic rise – up to 750% – in visitors to its careers website.

In the summer, resourcing and branding manager Max Barnard told Recruiter the Trust was taking its new employer brand out to the community for the first time by incorporating its values into recruitment advertising both on job boards and outdoors. 

Barnard told Recruiter this week the campaign had been supported by online targeting of potential candidates through Google’s advertising and marketing service AdWords, as well as social media.

The trust typically had 160 visits to its careers site a day but following the campaign, this increased to between 400 and 450. 

And over what Barnard describes as the “traditional dead time for recruitment” –the Christmas period, 23 December to 4 January – 5,000 people visited the site, up from 600 in the same period last year.

He said the campaign had the added benefit of engaging the community. “It’s about spreading the message about mental health and letting people know we are active in the recruitment market at the moment.”

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