Moneysupermarket.com conducted first interviews without requiring candidates, for development roles for data integration tool Ab Initio, to travel to the business’s head office in Chester. Recruitment advisor Anna Armstrong told Recruiter: “It was brilliant, and it was the first time I’d done it. When the idea came up, we thought it was really exciting and it’s worked brilliantly.”

Company HR director Alan Cairns told Recruiter that the nature of the organisation’s business demanded that technology play a key role in its recruitment process. “We’re a dotcom business, we are media owners [Moneysupermarket.com, Travelsupermarket.com, FSM], and we exist really as a marketing-led organisation,” he said.

“So we are all about recruiting. Every single person in our business is a digital ambassador. So what better way to recruit people for our business and to actually test that people are hungry to use technology,” he said of using the online service.

“What this does is help to differentiate the people that genuinely trust, engage and actually buy into the digital way of doing things,” Cairns said.

Moneysupermarket.com also put video to work in another creative way during the recent recruitment. Candidates whose CVs passed the first screening were asked to submit a video of themselves talking about living one of the company’s values “either in business or personal life or why we should hire you” in no more than thr

Five candidates were ultimately hired, after a subsequent assessment centres, and began work on Monday (31 October).

“It’s a great way to do it,” said Armstrong of using Hangouts. “The [transmission] quality is really good.”