Partnership Impact: Huntswood & Generation

Summary

Huntswood partnered with Generation UK to broaden access to motivated, diverse, work ready talent for customer service roles in a highly competitive recruitment market. Since beginning the collaboration, Huntswood has welcomed more than 31 Generation graduates into permanent roles and observed stronger interview attendance, improved candidate engagement, and smoother onboarding compared with other recruitment channels.

Partner background

Huntswood is a UK-based Business Process Outsourcing provider delivering customer service, complaints handling, advisory services, and specialist contracting solutions. As part of the global ResultsCX group, Huntswood supports regulated clients across different sectors. The organisation operates contact centre and support functions in Glasgow and Reading, alongside a growing remote workforce across the UK.

Huntswood is recognised in the UK for its workplace excellence and operational leadership:

• Great Place to Work
• RLW Employer
• Disability Confident

These accolades reflect Huntswood’s commitment to excellence, leadership and inclusive workplace culture.

The Challenge

Huntswood operates in an extremely competitive and saturated recruitment market, particularly within customer service and contact centre roles.

Against this backdrop, Huntswood recognised the need to continue to strengthen early-stage engagement and support commitment during recruitment and onboarding. A key challenge was ensuring that candidates were not only motivated but also genuinely prepared for the realities of customer service work.

At the same time, the business identified that there was an opportunity to reach capable individuals who were not active on job boards, applied through traditional recruitment methods or who lacked conventional experience. Many of these candidates had strong potential but required structured preparation and support to access opportunities. To address this, Huntswood sought to diversify its sourcing strategy by exploring new and non‑traditional channels that could connect the organisation with motivated candidates who demonstrated the right behaviours, mindset, and transferable skills.

Given the regulated nature of Huntswood’s client base, the business also placed significant emphasis on candidate readiness and compliance. Ensuring that individuals were equipped to meet rigorous vetting and onboarding requirements was essential to maintaining high standards across all customer programmes.

The partnership approach

The partnership began following an initial conversation on LinkedIn, marking Huntswood’s first collaboration with a bootcamp organisation. From the outset, the focus was on exploring whether Generation’s structured training approach could complement Huntswood’s existing recruitment processes.

Huntswood engaged with Generation’s IT Service Support and customer service programme, which provides learners with nine weeks of job aligned training. For Huntswood, this created access to candidates who had already demonstrated commitment through completing a demanding course and who arrived at the interview better prepared for the role.

A key difference noted by Huntswood was the level of engagement and reliability among Generation candidates. Compared with other recruitment channels, the organisation observed higher interview attendance rates and stronger follow through from candidates. As Kirsty Hogg the Senior Manager, Talent & Acquisition at Huntswood explained, Generation’s preparation and candidate support resulted in “a better percentage of no show-to-show rate for interview and pass rates as well.”

Onboarding support was another area where the partnership added value. Given Huntswood’s stringent vetting requirements, Generation provided practical assistance to help candidates prepare and submit required documentation ahead of onboarding. This support helped reduce friction in the vetting process and made the transition from offer to start smoother for both candidates and Huntswood’s resourcing team.

Importantly, the partnership aligned closely with Huntswood’s values around diversity and inclusion. Generation provided access to candidates who might otherwise be missed, including individuals from non-traditional backgrounds who were motivated to build long term careers.

Measurable impact and results

Since the partnership began, Huntswood has seen clear, observable benefits across recruitment quality and candidate engagement.

Hiring Outcomes

• More than 31 Generation graduates hired into permanent Huntswood roles
• All Generation hires employed directly by Huntswood and assigned to client campaigns

Recruitment Quality Improves

• Higher interview attendance rates compared with other charity or back to work partners
• Improved interview pass rates, supported by Generation’s candidate preparation
• Stronger candidate engagement throughout recruitment and onboarding
• Increased confidence that candidates understand the role and want to pursue it

Commitment and Retention Indicators

• Huntswood observed stronger early commitment among Generation hires
• Candidates demonstrated a clear interest in building careers rather than short term employment
• Reduced early drop off following training and onboarding

Process and Efficiency Gains

• Practical support with onboarding documentation helped streamline vetting processes
• Improved readiness and reduced time spent addressing candidate compliance issues
• A reliable pipeline of candidates supported ongoing recruitment needs

Diversity and Inclusion Impacts

• Access to candidates not typically reached through traditional recruitment channels
• Hiring practices more closely aligned with Huntswood’s commitment to inclusive recruitment
• Positive reinforcement of employer brand and values
  

Looking forward

Huntswood views this partnership as a strong foundation for continued collaboration. As part of the ResultsCX group, the organisation sees potential to explore how similar talent pathways could support broader recruitment needs, including multilingual and international roles. The partnership has also opened internal conversations around alternative recruitment models and how they can complement traditional approaches.

Both organisations remain focused on building sustainable employment pathways that benefit individuals while meeting the evolving needs of the business.

Find out more about Huntswood here.

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