Getting the mechanics right.

The AA faced real difficulties in recruiting new members of its highway patrol teams. There is a general shortage of time-served motor mechanics, and it is particularly acute in the South East as young people have tended to gravitate away from 'dirty technical' training to better paid office jobs.

The challenge becomes even more problematic because we are looking for technically qualified people who also have the personal qualities and communication skills to look after stranded AA members at the roadside.

In the past, the AA had used local press advertising to attract people to open days held in local communities. However, we believed that press advertising couldn't convey the demands and rewards of the AA patrol in sufficient detail. There wasn't enough information to pull people in - or to help them select themselves out. So we introduced a microsite that candidates would visit before attending the recruitment events. It had several functions.

We could position the AA as a leader in its market, a brand that had been trusted by motorists since 1905. We could explain what the role was all about, and encourage people to compare their strengths and preferences with the demands and challenges of the job. And we featured blunt reasons why people might want to join the AA and, just as significantly, why they might not. Candidates could also apply online, so the whole process became faster and easier.

People sometimes question whether the web is accessible to this kind of target audience. The fact is, when promoted effectively, it delivers tremendous results in all kinds of volume-recruitment contexts. In the AA's case, eight hundred people visited the microsite in the first week after advertising. Sixty people turned up for the first open day, of whom thirty were considered worthy of a job offer. It was clear that the microsite helped to raise the quality as well as the volume of the candidates entering the process. A 50% hit rate is clearly a superb result: as well as filling the jobs, it makes the recruitment process very much more cost-effective.