I am extremely excited and humbled to announce that VIQU has been shortlisted for not one, but two Recruiter Investing in Talent Awards!

• COVID-19 Champion
• Best Recruitment Team of the Year

When the rumours of a lockdown hit in mid-March we saw our permanent IT recruitment requirements crumble and our contract book take a big hit. Did we slow down and accept defeat? No, our recruitment team rose to the occasion and found new revenue streams, in addition to launching a new corporate social responsibility initiative to help our community and the NHS.

After a couple of initial enquiries from individuals who wanted to help the NHS, we decided to approach every NHS Trust in the UK, offering to source IT volunteers at no cost to them. Since the end of March, our NHS Volunteer initiative has been responsible for placing over 240 technical volunteers within the NHS.

Many of the volunteers who kindly donated their expertise to the NHS through VIQU were made redundant or could not find a new contract because of the impact of COVID-19. Not only has our initiative kept IT professionals motivated during a difficult time, it has provided them with NHS work experience to put on their CV and job offers in many cases. In fact, 45% of voluntary placements have converted into paid contracts/permanent employment.

Having a focus during lockdown and then over the past few months has been crucial to keeping our team focused and motivated. It has been a huge learning curve for our team, but we’ve come away from it a closer, more in-sync team, consistently representing the recruitment industry to the best of our ability.

The Recruitment Investing in Talent Awards 2020 takes place on December 11^th and we are very excited to find out the results, so watch this space!