EcoCentral hires two very different ways at once, and neither was being served by an off-the-shelf model.
On one side, high-volume operational recruitment: recycle centre operators, heavy machinery operators and Class 5 drivers, with campaigns drawing hundreds of applicants, including candidates with no CV at all. On the other, specialist and corporate roles requiring a much more tailored assessment of capability, experience and fit. Over 12 months, the same recruitment partnership evolved to handle both, with the process shaped around each role rather than forced into a template.
Why high-volume recruitment was costing EcoCentral time and money
This didn’t start with a single vacancy. EcoCentral saw an opportunity to look at recruitment more broadly and whether a different partnership model could work across the business. High application volumes were consuming managers’ time, temp-to-perm hiring remains expensive, and recruitment was inconsistent between teams. The question wasn’t simply how to spend less, but whether EcoCentral was getting the right people, and enough value, from the way it was recruiting.
Temp-to-perm had been a practical way to manage hiring risk, but the opportunity was to build greater confidence into the recruitment process from the outset. By more clearly defining the role, what good looked like, and the type of people most likely to succeed at EcoCentral, the focus could shift toward attracting candidates who saw EcoCentral as a long-term career choice and were genuinely motivated to join the organisation on a permanent basis.
Direct advertising could generate very high applicant volumes for operational roles. The challenge was not access to candidates, but having enough time and recruitment capability to assess them properly and make sure the strongest people were not being missed.
Different managers and business units approached recruitment in different ways. That created variation in process, candidate experience and the way EcoCentral was represented to the market, despite everyone ultimately hiring into the same organisation.
EcoCentral pays at least the equivalent of the Living Wage rate, while competing with businesses that may pay closer to minimum wage. That should provide a meaningful advantage in attracting good people. The question was whether the recruitment process was consistently turning that advantage into stronger hires: are we getting the best candidates for the money being invested?
How the recruitment process was redesigned, step by step
Rather than simply post an ad and forward CVs, the starting point was understanding what the right fit looked like for each role and hiring manager. The challenge was testing for that consistently without creating an administration-heavy process or requiring significant extra resource. Over the first six months, EcoCentral and K2 Recruit refined the workflow, technology and hand-offs together, not by bolting on more process, but by smoothing the service as they learnt what worked. Manager feedback became part of that evolution, helping create a recruitment model that could flex around the business rather than forcing the business into a fixed process.
Get inside the operation, not just the position description
Build a persona and a competency framework per role
Screen at volume without reading 700 CVs one by one
Report against competency, not against the CV
Book the interviews directly
Own the reference checking
Hand the decision back
Reviewed every position description, then interviewed the hiring managers about what good actually looks like on site: supervisors, shift patterns, resilience, working conditions, why people succeed or fail in that specific environment. High-volume operational hiring is not corporate hiring with the salary turned down.
Get inside the operation, not just the position description
Reviewed every position description, then interviewed the hiring managers about what good actually looks like on site: supervisors, shift patterns, resilience, working conditions, why people succeed or fail in that specific environment. High-volume operational hiring is not corporate hiring with the salary turned down.
"When you find the right partner, it stops feeling like you're being sold a candidate. It feels like finding the right people for your business. Our managers see Kerry as part of the process, but they never lose ownership of the decision."
The results, 12 months in
Hiring managers now spend their time at the pointy end of recruitment, reviewing candidates who have already been vetted against the role rather than working through large volumes of CVs themselves. That process has also surfaced strong candidates who may have been missed on paper, including people without a polished CV or those who sit outside the obvious profile but bring the attitude, energy and capability needed to succeed.
Permanent hiring has been delivered at less than half standard agency rates, while different divisions and head office now work through one consistent recruitment process. The broader model has also created better visibility across the market, supporting more accurate diversity reporting and giving EcoCentral access to K2 Recruit’s wider recruitment network and community reach.
K2 prices against the work a search takes, not the candidate’s salary. Fixed fees keep the commercial model clear and remove the percentage-based incentive attached to a higher salary. The service combines a strong research function with high human interaction, giving candidates a fairer assessment and helping protect the client’s brand without the cost of a traditional agency model.
Candidates introduced internally and those found through K2 are treated as part of the same recruitment process. There is no double dipping simply because someone has already entered the pipeline, and no reason to restart the process or create another placement fee.
Fees are clear and transparent and vary with the complexity of the search. Advertising, probity, testing and other pre-employment checks are charged at cost where required.
Excludes police vetting, testing and pre-employment checks, which EcoCentral runs in-house under any model. Fees vary by role complexity, and the contractor premium sits on top of an agency placement fee.