Wales & West Utilities

Graduate Campaign 2024

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Campaign Overview

Our long-standing client, Wales & West Utilities is a gas distribution business that services the gas infrastructure across Wales and the south-west of England, serving customers and communities with safe, reliable, and affordable energy services. New for September 2024, a brand-new role was created – a Sustainability and Environmental Graduate, adding to the already successful and well-established Engineering Graduate Programme. With placements across head office and within operational teams, this role will drive the delivery of environmental programmes and initiatives across the business that are dedicated to lowering their environmental footprint including: • Minimising carbon emissions, waste generation and resource use • Protecting and enhancing natural capital (specifically biodiversity and air quality) • Ensuring delivered projects and initiatives represent best value to consumers • Working with other industry working groups to identify, align, and implement best practice

How we worked together

In addition to the Engineering-based vacancies, Cohesion knew that this exciting new role would be a popular choice for today’s purpose-driven candidates who really want to make an impact with an employer who is making such strong sustainability commitments. Having created a targeted attraction plan working with local Universities, we received 221 applications for just this one vacancy. With a focus on providing an exceptional candidate recruitment experience to all applicants (regardless of volume), we worked hard to create a supportive journey that included multiple touchpoints with emphasis on supporting candidates from under-represented groups. The introduction of confidence-building candidate coaching solutions helped to reassure candidates about their own potential. The coaching solution offered insights with hints-and-tips for each stage such as video interview and assessment centre, and provided them with access to practice materials whilst supporting them to gain a better understanding of how to talk about their own skills and values throughout the process.

Outcomes

The overall campaign attracted 450 applications in total, resulting in offers being made to 4 candidates who began their Graduate career journey in September 2024. Through targeted attraction and coaching, both ethic and gender diversity was strong throughout, and feedback received has been overwhelmingly positive:

Zoe Jones, Resourcing Business Partner at Wales & West Utilities, praised Cohesion’s expertise:

“Having worked with Cohesion for over 10 years, we have been consistently impressed with the Early Careers campaign’s they have delivered on our behalf. Their expertise and deep understanding of not only the Early Careers market, but the energy and utilities sector we operate in, has been invaluable to us. Cohesion’s commitment to delivering high quality recruitment solutions makes them a trusted partner in our early careers talent acquisition strategy.”

A WWU candidate shared their positive experience:

“The recruitment team were fantastic and very on top of everything, reaching out often and making sure I was up to date and prepared for every stage of the process!”

This campaign showcased Cohesion’s ability to deliver targeted, high-quality recruitment solutions that aligned with Wales & West Utilities sustainability goals, attracting diverse, purpose-driven talent.

If you’d like to discuss how Cohesion can collaborate with you on a successful recruitment campaign, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Deborah Edmondson at debs@earlytalent.careers or on 0121 713 8343