Power to the people: How Octopus Energy used LinkedIn to influence hires and recruitment strategies and build brand awareness
SUCCESS STORY
Increasing efficiencies and brand awareness with smart tools and resources
Octopus Energy is an award-winning renewable energy business that has rapidly expanded since it was founded in 2015. Its sole aim is to provide customers with cost-effective and green energy solutions through cutting-edge energy products and commitment to first-class customer service.
In fact, they have earned Which? Recommended Provider status, seven years in a row. Octopus Energy has no shortage of skilled individuals applying for roles within the business yet attracting the right individuals with the right attitude – those passionate about decarbonisation, green energy and customer love – requires deep analysis and a greater understanding of the talent landscape.
Octopus Energy Group is comprised of ten companies and operates in 18 countries across five continents. Despite an already impressive global reach, it remains an ambitious and growing business. Therefore, it needs to hire talented, considerate and enthusiastic individuals to maintain its competitive edge and remain at the forefront of green and game-changing energy solutions.
THE CHALLENGE
Hiring a diverse pool of talent through increased brand awareness
Hiring a range of skill sets is a multi-faceted challenge but it was paramount that Octopus Energy attracted diverse candidates with a mix of skills. As the UK-based business expanded, it needed to understand market conditions and cultures across different geographies. It worked with LinkedIn because it understood that positive change could only come from hiring incredibly talented people.
Octopus Energy recognised the professional networking opportunities that LinkedIn provided. However, it also acknowledged that the platform’s benefits were being underutilised. Efficiency is paramount to the brand. Hence it fully leveraged all the right tools and smart technology at its disposal.
Octopus Energy’s recruitment team embarked on a journey to increase brand awareness, understand the markets it wished to expand into and develop a hiring strategy and branding plan that could help reduce the time to hire, improve the diversity of its talent pool and assist with candidate management.
THE SOLUTION
Creating a sustainable talent acquisition strategy
To support its global expansion, Octopus Energy worked collaboratively with LinkedIn to create a sustainable talent acquisition and build a dynamic customer-facing brand awareness campaign, with storytelling at its heart.
Olivia Brown, Head of Talent Acquisition at Octopus Energy, explains: “LinkedIn is a great place to talk to candidates and tell them about our journey, but the most important thing—and the best way to ensure that customers are getting the best experience—is to ensure we’re hiring the most incredibly talented people, who are given the freedom to deliver to their full potential.”
Olivia describes Octopus Energy’s ethos as being mission and culture-led. Therefore, it is imperative that she and her team source and attract multi-skilled and passionate individuals who thrive in non-traditional corporate environments.
“As we’ve scaled the business, LinkedIn has been really great for us,” Olivia continues. “But as we continue and the bigger we get, the thing that keeps us winning is our culture. It’s essential that our culture comes across in our brand awareness and Company Pages and attracts the right candidates.”
Recruiting diverse skills and talent with real-life and relatable content
Storytelling has been central to Octopus Energy’s brand campaign. To recruit the best candidates, the business has drawn on real-life and lived experiences that resonate with the talented individuals that it is looking to attract.
For example, when the company was growing its low-carbon tech teams, despite recruiting for specific roles, it wished to attract a wide scope of talent and be perceived as an open and inclusive employer with far-reaching opportunities. It not only sought to showcase all aspects of company culture through its Life and Career Pages but it also utilised LinkedIn Talent Insights to identify a broader talent pool, as it would rather attract “talented generalists”.
Using AI equitably to meet the needs of a growing and ambitious business
LinkedIn worked alongside Octopus Energy, delivering highly personalised training and guidance sessions that spanned different regions, supported the brand’s growth and aligned with its strategic priorities, including market mapping strategies.
According to Olivia, being efficient with time and resources is incredibly important to the business. Hence, it was keen to leverage AI capabilities within the LinkedIn platform, especially the ability to send AI-assisted InMails, which drove positive response rates and candidate engagement. For instance, AI-assisted InMails sent by Octopus Energy’s recruitment team have a response rate (55.3 per cent), which is 15 per cent above industry benchmarks.
“As we continue to scale, the biggest challenge for us is ensuring that we continue to recruit the best people into our businesses around the world and find people who have amazing minds,” explains Olivia.
“We have started to use AI but is not about replacing people’s jobs and we don’t use AI to filter people out. We use AI to drive better outcomes. Recruitment has its peaks and troughs so it’s important to use tools that make our teams smarter and more efficient.”
Olivia continues: “The AI features within the LinkedIn platform have allowed our recruiters to do more, to be better and to grow faster in all of our activities. It’s about spending time in the right places where our time is more valuable and LinkedIn’s AI features have enabled us to do that equitably.
“What it’s not doing is removing great conversations with candidates, stopping our ability to ask them questions or getting to know people through real-life human conversations.”
Olivia concludes: “We have a complex and diverse business which needs people skilled in technology, software engineering and hardware as well as mechanical engineers, plumbers and drivers. We’ve hired people from all these different areas through LinkedIn. It’s an incredible tool."
Main product used:
THE RESULTS
LinkedIn’s AI capabilities
AI-assisted InMails have a response rate of 55.3% – 15% above industry benchmarks
Engaged audience
16,000 – number of job applications generated annually directly from Life Pages, but to date, Octopus has received more than 300,000 applications
Connected candidates
Candidates who view Octopus Energy’s Life Pages are 5.8 times more likely to be hired
Boosted acceptance rates
InMail acceptance rate increased by 45% from 22% to 32%
High influenced hire rate
Posting meaningful organic content helped to influence Octopus Energy’s hire rate of 74%
“The AI features within the LinkedIn platform have allowed our recruiters to do more, to be better and to grow faster in all of our activities. It’s not about replacing jobs or filtering candidates out: it’s about spending time in the right places and LinkedIn’s AI features help us do that equitably.”
ABOUT OCTOPUS ENERGY
Octopus Energy is a global clean energy tech business, driving the affordable, green energy system of the future. Under its own retail brand, Octopus delivers world-class customer service and cutting-edge energy products to 7.7 million households globally. Its operations span 18 countries and the entire energy value chain. The group – which has 10,000 employees – invests in, builds and flexibly manages renewable energy, operating a £6 billion portfolio of projects – one of Europe’s largest. Octopus has licensed its advanced data and machine learning platform, Kraken, to support more than 54 million customer accounts worldwide through licensing deals with companies such as EDF, E.ON and Origin Energy. Kraken enables Octopus to drive the electrification of heat and transport through smart tariffs and innovative cleantech. Backed by pension funds, investors and energy giants, Octopus Energy Group businesses deliver cheaper, greener energy and cutting-edge tech to countries and customers worldwide.
INDUSTRY:
Renewable Energy
No. OF EMPLOYEES:
10,000 employees
HEADQUARTERS:
London, England
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