CHALLENGE

With the award of the first Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering in 2013, the Royal Academy of Engineering, were seeking to appoint a Director of the QEPrize, who will bring the focus and capacity to enable them to consolidate and expand the achievements of the first award. The position offers a uniquely visible and influential platform from which to promote not only the QEPrize, but also engineering in its broadest sense. A key objective will be to secure the industry support to finalise our endowment. This is an extremely high profile and important role at the Royal Academy of Engineering – attracting quality candidates was crucial.

SOLUTION

In discussion with the Royal Academy we agreed that it was unlikely that the preferred audience would be job seekers. Instead we decided that the very best potential candidates would be “passive” not currently actively looking for a job and un-likely to be considering the Royal Academy as a career destination. Likely candidates could come from a diverse range of backgrounds including: business leaders, academics and broadcasters. So we avoided recruitment focused media solutions and instead made good use of technology and served high profile banners, contextually, to a news reading audience. In addition we took a straight-forward direct approach by reaching out to relevant networks via a letter from the CEO.

RESULTS

The simple web page that we created received over 1,000 visits with a high volume indicating an interest in the role and submitting letters and CVs. The decision makers at the Royal Academy were delighted with the quality of candidates and were able to make an excellent appointment.