RPO1: powered by Morson: Gaining credibility with clients and enhancing graduate hiring

As a complete resourcing service that wraps around an organisation’s brand to redefine its talent strategy, RPO1: powered by Morson delivers a tailored service for both clients and candidates. Committed to levelling the playing field for candidates, they wanted to engineer unconscious bias out of the selection process, and remove the preconceived notions of specific qualifications and experience profiles that can lead to excellent candidates being overlooked.

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When customers wanted data to support their hiring decision, the company had to look for a flexible solution that would enhance their offering, especially when it came to graduate hiring.

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Using Thrive, they were able to support hiring managers in their process and make graduates' profiles come to life with simple yet robust assessments, winning repeat business from their clients.

Who is RPO1: powered by Morson?

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RPO1 is the Morson Group's recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) delivery arm. As a boutique facility with 50 years of expertise behind it, RPO1 is a complete resourcing service that wraps around an organisation’s brand to redefine its talent strategy.

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They first started using Thrive in June 2023.

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What did they want to achieve?

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Back their candidates with data and increase authority with clients.

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What were their challenges?

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As a complete resourcing service, RPO1: powered by Morson works with a multitude of clients providing end-to-end hiring services. Clients outsource their recruitment to Morson Group’s seasoned RPO1 professionals, expecting fantastic results. “Placing our clients’ ambitions at our heart, we become one with businesses. We listen, understand and curate individual solutions with truly embedded teams that solve challenges, whilst filling organisations with talent, expertise, and knowledge for long-term success,” explained Jacqui Jones, Senior Client Relationship Manager at Morson.
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“The challenge is not just in encouraging hiring managers to think differently and consider candidates’ soft skills, but to offer decision-makers data to support their hiring decisions. That’s where Thrive comes in.”

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While they were able to place excellent candidates successfully, Morson started to sense a shift in the market. “Clients come to Morson because we have an enviable track record of combining the expertise of our team with innovative solutions,” Jacqui elaborated. “We are constantly looking for ways to enhance and evolve the recruitment process, always ensuring that it supports a positive Employee Value Proposition (EVP) and employer brand for hiring organisations. By using an assessment tool to look beyond technical competencies, performance and the typical tick boxes of a job description or CV, hiring managers are able to consider the candidate more holistically through factoring in attributes such as problem solving, adaptability and empathy.”

As Morson worked with a variety of clients, placing candidates of various levels, they looked for a solution that would enable them to make their process more robust, giving customers a tangible analysis of potential hires. “We work with different customers, and each organisation has different recruitment requirements, so we needed something flexible that would work for each of our clients’ needs,” Jacqui summed up.

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Solution: Thrive’s market-leading assessments

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Morson joined Thrive and quickly implemented the assessments into their process. “I love how simple Thrive is to use from a user perspective. It’s super user-friendly,” Jacqui said. “We also love how helpful the Thrive team is. Many times clients look for advice when it comes to choosing which traits should be assessed. All I need to do is speak to the internal occupational psychologists at Thrive for their recommendations, the advice comes back instantly. The speed of response and customer engagement from Thrive is excellent. It just makes it such a simple, easy process.”
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“The speed of response and customer engagement from Thrive is excellent. It just makes it such a simple, easy process.”

The particular way Thrive is utilised changes from client to client, but the feedback across the client base remains extremely positive. “Once we have a shortlist of preferred candidates who have been invited to interview, we then send them the Thrive assessment out,” Jacqui explained.

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“After the candidates have been assessed, the manager report goes to the hiring manager. What is really useful is that the assessment highlights potential areas of risk and suggests some probing questions to help the hiring manager prepare for the interview. Some customers like applicants to have their candidate report at the same time, to help them prepare for the interview, and some prefer that the candidate receives it at the end of the process as part of their feedback. Customers like the flexibility that Thrive allows in terms of whether the candidate gets the feedback report straightaway or at the end of the process, but, either way, the results of the assessment are not only useful to the hiring organisation, but also to the candidate. It also helps create a clearer picture of where attention should be focused for future applications for both the candidate and the recruiter.”

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The results

“Thrive adds another layer of rigour to the recruitment process. In terms of our customer base, it elevates the service we offer.”

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Elevated graduate hiring

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One of the areas where Morson has found the most success with Thrive is graduate hiring. “Thrive has been really successful for the graduate campaigns, because as a rule, graduate CVs don’t have much difference between them, because they’ve not had the level of work experience of people who have already embarked on a career,” Jacqui explained.

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“Thrive has been brilliant because. it provides an objective and standardised way to assess individuals, removing biases and subjective judgments. That’s been particularly good.”

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“For this reason, it’s very difficult for hiring managers to look at a CV and really understand what skills, behaviours, and attributes that person has,” Jacqui continued. “Thrive has been brilliant because it provides an objective and standardised way to assess individuals, removing biases and subjective judgments. That’s been particularly good.”

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Supported hiring managers

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Morson has also found that Thrive was invaluable when it comes to giving hiring managers much needed support in their decision-making process. “This is true for various different scenarios. It might be, for instance, that they’ve got a number of applications for the role but they’re all internal candidates, and they want to have a really robust process that’s equal and fair, and also so that the applicants have got some really tangible feedback in terms of what they can improve on if they weren’t successful,” Jacqui said.

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“Another example is a client that had over 300 applications for a role — previously in these kinds of situations we would invite candidates to attend an assessment day. These were a massive logistical undertaking and took a huge amount of time and effort every time, not to mention the reduction in productivity because the hiring managers had to pause their day jobs as they were often active facilitators of the assessment centres.”
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“Thrive has been really helpful to guide managers in terms of where they’re challenging or probing in an interview. The report highlights possible risk areas and provides interview questions to support the hiring manager, which has been really well-received. It gives hiring managers a really fair, transparent structure and every candidate is going through the same process.”

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“We recommended the Thrive platform as an alternative to these assessment days, driving more efficiency. We shared the example hiring manager and candidate reports with the customer and they were really impressed and could see the value in terms of the ability to structure the interview at the next stage, and from a candidate experience perspective, how amazing it is to provide such detailed feedback.”

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Beyond the unique ways different clients have used the Thrive platform to increase efficiency and support their decisions, Jacqui highlighted the role of the assessments in making the process more robust overall: “Thrive has been really helpful to guide managers in terms of where they’re challenging or probing in an interview. The report highlights possible risk areas and provides interview questions to support the hiring manager, which has been really well-received. It gives hiring managers a really fair, transparent structure and every candidate is going through the same process.”

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Received repeat business

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As a recruitment agency, Morson relies on placing such exceptional candidates that organisations choose to use them over and over again for their hiring needs. “Thrive adds another layer of rigour to the recruitment process. In terms of our customer base, it elevates the service we offer. It’s an extra tool in the toolkit for us,” Jacqui explained the impact Thrive has had for their offering. “Thrive has helped us retain clients because it is supporting our skills-led recruitment capabilities by bringing together the knowledge of our experienced team and psychological data to help hirers identify the right skills and potential, enhancing our position as experts in the recruitment field.”

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“Thrive has helped us retain clients because it is supporting our skills-led recruitment capabilities by bringing together the knowledge of our experienced team and psychological data to help hirers identify the right skills and potential, enhancing our position as experts in the recruitment field.”

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One client was particularly memorable for Jacqui: “They originally came to us with a small campaign, requesting five profiles to be assessed, and since then they’ve come back seven times asking for the same process, ranging from three to eleven profiles that they wanted  Thrive to assess per campaign. Coming back to us multiple times speaks volumes.”

The manager report has also been vital to Morson’s ability to retain clients. “Being able to present the report as part of the shortlist to the hiring manager elevates our service and credibility, and our trusted partnership approach with the customer,” Jacqui summed up.

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Interested to hear how Thrive can help you produce similar results? Book a demo with us today.