TRANSFORMING ENERGY WITH NESO
TRANSFORMING ENERGY WITH NESO
TRANSFORMING ENERGY WITH NESO
TRANSFORMING ENERGY WITH NESO
Services
Recruitment Marketing
Award Winning
Impressions
Hires
Pound cost per hire
Wiser partnered with NESO to deliver a cutting-edge, data-driven recruitment campaign, transforming their talent acquisition strategy. The mission was to attract over 250 high-calibre professionals across six critical talent groups. By leveraging research, audience insights, and digital analytics, we helped NESO exceed their hiring targets, filling key roles and positioning the organisation as a top employer of choice.
The power of a challenge
NESO stands at the forefront of Britain’s energy transformation. After recently becoming an independent, publicly owned organisation, with a rapid shift toward renewable energy and ambitious decarbonisation targets, NESO faced an urgent need to expand its team. But with over 250 roles to fill across six talent groups—ranging from data and analytics to power system engineers and leaders—NESO required more than a traditional recruitment strategy.
Their existing methods weren’t generating the volume or quality of hires needed to keep pace with the changing energy landscape. That’s where Wiser stepped in: to energise their talent acquisition efforts with a strategy driven by insights, data, and innovation.
AT A GLANCE
#390C2F — NESO Plum
Our partnership with NESO not only exceeded expectations but set a new benchmark for recruitment in the energy sector. Over 18,000 applications were generated—four times more than previous efforts—resulting in 266 successful hires. By integrating data at every stage, NESO now has a future-proofed talent acquisition system, with a cost-per-hire of £715 — significantly lower than the £4,500 industry average.
Additionally, the campaign helped raise NESO’s profile as an employer of choice, garnering over 10 million impressions and driving a 62,000 increase in website visitors. Our data-led strategy not only filled positions but positioned NESO to attract and retain top talent in the long term.
Careers site ad clicks
Total applications
Impressions
Increase in career site visitors
Hires made
Pound cost per hire
A data-driven recruitment strategy
Understanding the target audience was key to building a recruitment strategy that resonated. We began by interviewing 10 employees from each of NESO’s target groups, uncovering their career motivators, preferred platforms, valued benefits, and expectations for professional growth. These insights became the backbone of our creative messaging across channels, from LinkedIn to YouTube.
We split our campaign into three core objectives:
Drive high-calibre talent into NESO’s pipeline, future-proof NESO’s talent strategy by using data to guide decision-making and boost awareness of NESO as an employer of choice, especially among diverse talent.
Using LinkedIn Audience Insights, we continually refined our targeting to reach the most relevant talent. We optimised messaging for each group, testing creative content to highlight key motivators, such as NESO’s purpose-driven mission and career growth opportunities. We leveraged Attraction Analytics, a bespoke tool we developed, to monitor the candidate journey across all touchpoints—career site, ATS, and ads. This ensured that we maximised ROI by adjusting our strategy in real-time based on campaign performance.
Watt's the solution?
Our solution was not just a campaign—it was a comprehensive talent acquisition ecosystem built on research, flexibility, and ongoing optimisation.
To start, we focused on platform optimisation by testing budgets across LinkedIn and YouTube. After analysing the results, we discovered that LinkedIn attracted more high-intent candidates. As a result, we increased the LinkedIn budget by 25%, which led to a remarkable 672% uplift in applications.
Next, we applied landing page testing to improve engagement. Through A/B testing, we determined that directing all traffic to the NESO job search results page was the most effective approach, achieving a 97% engagement rate and driving over 60,475 job ad views.
Finally, we prioritised creative flexibility by developing modular assets that could be quickly updated based on performance data. This allowed us to continuously refine and optimise the campaign, ensuring the creative content remained relevant and engaging throughout its run.
