How WSET saved £250,000 a year on external recruitment

We caught up with Wendy Harpur, Chief People & Culture Officer at WSET on the importance of being able to reach a diverse talent pool as a charity within their space, and how recruitment software has helped them cut costs and manual processes.

Valentina Behrouzi

I'm Val, one of the Marketing Managers here at Teamtailor, responsible for our Global marketing. I love talking about candidate experience and how we can strive to make hiring more inclusive.

WSET is the global leader in drinks education, offering a comprehensive suite of globally recognised wine, spirits, beer and sake qualifications. Their purpose is to empower people through inspiring learning experiences all over the world.

WSET is a global organization, proud to have people who work all over the world. They have people in Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and the USA as well as the UK.

They cite their values as trust, integrity, empowerment, inspiration, dynamism and inclusivity.

WSET is built on an inclusive and purposeful culture where its people are valued. - Wendy Harpur, Chief People & Culture Officer at WSET

Wendy Harpur

Wendy is Chief People & Culture Officer at WSET with a background of director-level roles in education, professional services and tech companies. In her free time, she is an equestrian, a cryptic crossword addict and a former GB high jump champion.

Recruitment challenges

As a charity, efficient and cost effective recruitment is important as well as being able to reach the widest possible and most diverse talent pool.

Our processes were manual, clunky, drawn-out and very expensive. We relied on external recruitment consultants to find candidates with mixed success. CVs and documentation were printed and shared or compiled and shared manually by email. It was painful and not led by the people who wanted to hire new team members so the engagement with candidates was limited and their experience probably not the best.

Teamtailor allows us to effectively promote the message about our brand, ethos and culture. Teamtailor is the medium that allows us to engage with candidates immediately and throughout the recruitment process. It allows our culture to shine through, as well as the personalities of our hiring managers which maximises the chances of a successful hire.

Why did you choose Teamtailor?

I love everything about Teamtailor:

The user-friendly and intuitive interface
Its ability to enhance/share our employer brand and candidates' experience
It was easy and quick to set up and integrate into the organisation
Our hiring managers use Teamtailor for every role whether internal or external and engage frequently with the candidates via the messaging function
The interview teams and kits make keeping everyone informed of activity really easy with ease of access to interview notes and scores
The system has mechanisms to remove bias and to ensure fairness of scoring and approach
The customer service is exceptional and almost instant
The automatic links to recruitment boards including LinkedIn make life much easier to get the message out and to reach candidates
We no longer need to use recruitment agencies and having made something like 72 placements (not all external), we have saved an enormous amount of money and time

How has Teamtailor impacted your hiring?

We’ve placed over 70 people into roles either internally or with external candidates through Teamtailor and no longer need to use recruitment agencies so we have saved around £250,000 in a year which makes a massive difference to a charity. The system makes it easy and seamless for hiring managers and their teams to manage the process and to engage and build relationships with candidates from day one of their application. Our recruitment is so much faster and seamless – no more manual processes. The customer service team are amazing and provide answers instantly.