“Being able to work with a UK based company was important, for obvious security and compliance reasons. With only a small number of vendors in the marketplace being able to fully meet all of our requirements it has been really beneficial to find such an experienced provider, as Shine, who has been able to support us on this transformation journey.”
Tom McKay, Deputy Head of Recruitment, the Royal Navy
Initially the Navy used an ad hoc collection of several different platforms to conduct their interviews, but quickly commenced the process of procuring an enduring single virtual interviewing platform. Any such capability needed to meet the rigorous security requirements of the MOD, support enhanced supervision and remote assurance options, whilst providing a reliable service and offer sound value for money.
The Royal Navy engaged the services of Shine Interview, whose technology was contracted using the G-Cloud, in order to deliver against its requirements and support the digital transformation of their recruitment processes. They implemented two-way interviewing first, giving them the facility to record an interview in a fully-branded, secure environment replacing their traditional ‘face to face’ interview. This was quickly flowed by the introduction of a ‘pre-recorded’ sift interview as they developed an understanding of the technology and explored means to exploit its full potential.
Within the first six months of rolling out ‘Live video interviews’ the number of candidate interviews successfully completed had increased by 140%, when compared with the same period in the previous year. At the same time, candidate satisfaction levels with the overall Royal Navy recruitment process increased by 7%to 78%.
Virtual interviewing technology has enabled the Royal Navy to interview candidates from all over the world at a time to suit. By doing so it was clear real benefits has been found by employing video interviewing to delivering an innovative solution to reduce workloads, costs and most importantly improve candidate experience.
The Royal Navy recruitment processes now accommodates both pre-recorded and live interviewing elements and they continues to explore options to grow this capability. As a domestic and international employer, drawing candidates from across the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, the use of video interviewing has allowed candidates to further their applications from the comfort of their own homes.
Over 11,000 applicants have been invited through Shine to complete an interview, with over 8,500 completions, and these numbers are continuing to grow.
The initial scope was to streamline the recruitment process and the feedback from the Royal Navy users and candidates is very positive. The Royal Navy have digitised a previously traditional recruitment process which has been used across the entireRoyal Navy base.
In difficult circumstances during COVID they were able to completely transform the recruitment process and reduce time to hire significantly, whilst saving hours of recruiter effort but not compromising candidate experience.
Feedback from both candidates and Royal Navy users has been received and is used to constantly update procedures and processes.“Being able to work with a UK based company was important, for obvious security and compliance reasons. With only a small number of vendors in the market place being able to fully meet all of our requirements it has been really beneficial to find such an experienced provider, as Shine, who has been able to support us on this transformation journey.’Tom McKay, Deputy Head of Recruitment, the Royal Navy
The Royal Navy, supported by Shine Interview were shortlisted for The FIRM awards 2022 for ‘Outstanding Impact Transformation & Change’ in recognition of our work together.