Partnership Power
June 2008
Tribal’s Brendan Harris talks about how partnership in the public sector is alive and well and providing cost efficiencies as well as improved customer experience in recruitment.
The Government’s drive to engender partnership across the public sector has been much talked about. But there’s a group of local authorities in the West Midlands who are really walking the talk. A new jobs and careers portal has been launched by 12 of the largest employers in the region, Birmingham City Council, Coventry City Council, Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, Herefordshire Council, Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council, Shropshire County Council, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, Staffordshire County Council, Warwickshire County Council, Wolverhampton City Council, Worcestershire County Council and the West Midlands LGA.
The new portal www.wmjobs.co.uk provides job seekers with an unrivalled job search experience – a one stop place to search and apply for over 400 live jobs throughout local government in the region. The consortium have collaborated on the technology and marketing strategy to ensure that the portal integrates with each of their own technology and that marketing benefits from driving candidates to the portal is cohesive and memorable. Karen James, Portal Manager, said: “We are really pleased to have launched the portal as we believe it will benefit both partner authorities and job seekers. Having jobs for numerous employers in one place, will make it easy for people searching for vacancies. A portal application form has been produced by the partner authorities and many of them have chosen to use this, therefore, easing the process for users to apply for vacancies with different authorities. We are confident that the portal will help to increase the profile of local government in the West Midlands and encourage people to work within the region. ”The portal developed by Tribal is being driven by the West Midlands Local Government Association as a national standard of best practice and already the North East, Cambridgeshire and Dorset have similar projects underway.
The ambition is for the portal to become a job search location of choice for people from across the region or for those considering a move to the region who want to investigate the many advantages of a career within the public sector. It is the UK's first public sector fully mobile enabled jobs portal allowing job seekers to register for free text alerts to their mobile phones, and then should they have internet access on their phones, they will be able to view full job details and fully research the employers and register into a Talent Pool that will be searched through by the employers on a very regular basis.
The portal also providing information and work-life benefits that many perhaps have not realised about the region beforehand.
To see partnership in action go to: www.wmjobs.co.uk
Brendan Harris is Commercial Development Director at Tribal Resourcing.
Contacts:
Brendan Harris at Tribal via Brendan.harris@tribalresourcing.com
Karen James at the West Midlands Local Government Association via k.james@wmlga.gov.uk