90 Sourced, 28 Hired in 4 Weeks: Morgan McKinley Delivers Content Team

This leading travel search site, founded in 2003, connects people directly to everything the travel industry has to offer. Its highly-rated free mobile apps have been downloaded more than 40 million times. Their products are available in more than 30 languages and 70 currencies, and they employ more than 750 people.

Online travel search sites have become a highly competitive business globally. An effective way of differentiating from a competitor and raising brand awareness in this digital age is to generate interesting and informative content. But what sort of content? How effective is it? Where do we start? As they say, you will never really know until you try. For this reason, this client wanted to run a short-term feasibility study and deploy an editorial term, and quickly. The company turned to Morgan McKinley for the solution.

To drive up its brand awareness through blogging and targeted social media activities, the company decided to recruit 25 content writers and three editors for a three-month test project at its office. The objective was to establish whether high-quality written content (including travel blogs, editorials and market insights) would have a positive impact on revenues and raise their profile in the region. They aimed to have all the contractors on board within just four weeks. After an initial conversation, Morgan McKinley drafted a proposal demonstrating an innovative approach to identifying and hiring content professionals who would meet expectations.

The project allowed Morgan McKinley Talent Solutions to leverage a newly designed recruitment portal called The List, designed to offer clients a way of viewing candidates’ profiles and short videos where they describe their abilities and suitability for specific roles. It proved to be an ideal way to source candidates with the right profile: primarily talented and creative university graduates looking for temporary work. The approach saved time because it meant there was no need to conduct first-round interviews with candidates face-to-face.

Morgan McKinley Talent Solutions was able to source candidates very quickly thanks to its expertise spanning marketing communications and content creation, knowledge of the travel and hospitality sectors, experience in managing freelance contract hires, and great contacts in the graduate market.

Morgan McKinley Talent Solutions sourced more than 90 highly motivated and well-qualified candidates from some of the leading universities and multi-national companies in a 4-week window. At the time, our client was expanding rapidly and had limited office space, so our ability to payroll and house these freelance contractors in our own offices was a further added value of the service. We were able to monitor the productivity of the writing teams and provide a clear communication channel between the candidates and the client. 90% of the candidates identified by Morgan McKinley Talent Solutions were called for interviews, and of these, a third were recruited. The average time to hire was a mere 14 days.

The Morgan McKinley Talent Solutions Programme Manager commented, “By housing all the contractors in our office, we could manage each of them properly, ensuring that they worked the scheduled hours they were being paid for. They did have the option of working at home, but it was more effective to bring them into our offices daily. The speed of delivery and the efficient administration behind the recruitment activity was a huge relief for the client given the time constraints.”

The combination of this insight and experience, plus our innovative approach, enabled us to meet the demanding client brief on schedule.