Customer Stories 
Summary
In 2021, Virgin Media and O2 merged to form one of the UK’s largest telecommunications providers. But beyond the headlines of the high-profile deal, a complex challenge awaited: integrating two fundamentally different recruitment teams while competing for talent in what was, at the time, a volatile job market shaped by skills shortages and the Great Resignation.
The decision to implement Avature wasn’t just about unifying teams; it was about creating a best-in-class recruitment ecosystem that allowed the organization to address immediate hiring needs while supporting the evolution of its talent strategy in the long run.
Since the rollout, Virgin Media O2 has achieved remarkable ROI, including saving £4.5 million in the first year and cutting agency spend by 30 percent. On top of this, direct sourcing has increased by 98 percent, even for hard-to-fill tech and engineering roles.
Read on to explore how Virgin Media O2 is harmonizing and completely transforming recruitment.
About Virgin Media O2
Virgin Media O2 is a leading British telecommunications organization formed as a joint venture between Liberty Global and Telefónica.
Combining the UK’s largest and most reliable mobile network with a broadband network offering the fastest and most widely available speeds, the organization serves approximately 45 million customers across broadband, mobile, TV and home phone services.
The Challenge: A Tale of Two Hiring Models and Tech Landscapes
Before the merger, Virgin Media and O2 operated on two entirely different recruitment models. Virgin Media had an in-house talent acquisition team for specialist roles and relied on an RPO for volume hiring, while O2 fully outsourced hiring for its retail, estate and specialist operations.
With the merger, the newly formed organization now had to manage highly diverse hiring needs, spanning corporate positions, retail jobs in more than 400 stores, field-based engineering roles and cutting-edge technology hires in AI, machine learning and data democratization.
However, both organizations brought in distinct legacy talent acquisition systems that lacked sourcing and automation capabilities, making filling the 7,000 roles a year needed to meet customer demands difficult.
We need to operate at a fast pace to respond to our customers waiting for installations and network. So we need to be able to hire really fast.”
Sharron O’Donnell
Head of Talent Acquisition, Virgin Media O2
On top of these limitations, hiring managers and candidates also had poor and inconsistent experiences.
Despite internal pressure to make do with existing systems, the Talent Acquisition Team knew that to win the war for talent, it needed a market-leading platform that enabled innovation and continuous improvement. They partnered with the Chief People & Transformation Officer and the Deputy Chief People Officer to make the business case for investing in Avature.
We recognized that if we wanted to attract the best talent, we had to invest in leading technology that could not only solve our challenges today but also work with us and build for the future.”
Sharron O’Donnell
Head of Talent Acquisition, Virgin Media O2
The Solution: A Bold Digital Transformation in Recruitment
The leadership team at VMO2 approved the investment in Avature’s Talent Acquisition Suite for a number of reasons. A key advantage was Avature’s highly customizable nature, which meant the TA team could quickly adapt the platform autonomously as new needs arose, whether adjusting workflows, creating a new template or updating a portal.
The value is that the technology sits within our team; we’re the owners.”
Carrie Small
Talent Acquisition Excellence Manager, Virgin Media O2
Avature’s ability to integrate seamlessly with existing systems, including Oracle HCM, Microsoft Teams and assessment platforms, was another key factor in securing leadership buy-in.
Automation was especially important for Virgin Media O2. Operating in an environment that “is all about speed,” the team is constantly seeking optimization opportunities that enable recruiters to dedicate their time to high-impact activities, like building relationships with skilled talent.
Everything we can do to make it easy for the recruiters to have conversations with great talent, bring them into our organization and automate those processes is absolutely critical for us.”
Carrie Small
Talent Acquisition Excellence Manager, Virgin Media O2
Beyond the technical capabilities, Virgin Media O2 also sought a true partner that could support the evolution of its vision and strategies. A shared commitment to agility and continuous improvement would help align priorities and consistently drive innovation.
Rapid Implementation 101
While digital transformations of this scale often take significant time, Virgin Media O2 moved from initial design to go-live in just seven months. Several key decisions made this record-time implementation possible:
- Defining Personas Early: Since Virgin Media O2 recruits for various roles, they mapped out personas before designing the recruitment process and used a single workflow with conditional variants to manage all of them.
- Conducting User Acceptance Testing (UAT) In-House: Team members tested workflows, played different personas and explored potential workarounds, increasing engagement and buy-in.
- Building a Strong Partnership With Avature: Virgin Media O2 adopted a DevOps approach for integration deployment and followed a highly structured project plan with clearly defined testing windows for portals and process rollouts.
- Ongoing Training Even Beyond Go-Live: Sessions continue after implementation to support new team members, evolving roles and process updates.
Training is continuous. It becomes critical once you lean into that mindset and focus on enabling the technology.”
Carrie Small
Talent Acquisition Excellence Manager, Virgin Media O2
Inside Virgin Media O2’s New Talent Acquisition Era
The first significant milestone in Virgin Media O2’s digital transformation in recruitment was the launch of its careers marketplace. This move had a great strategic impact because, for the first time, as O’Donnell put it, the organization went to market as a single brand. To ensure the site stays fresh, compelling and aligned with evolving needs, Virgin Media O2 uses Avature’s content management capabilities to autonomously update it whenever necessary.
Coming from a fragmented ecosystem with no sourcing capabilities, Virgin Media O2’s adoption of Avature CRM marked a pivotal moment in the organization’s transition from a reactive to a proactive hiring model. Now, the organization uses the solution to create talent communities that provide an entire database from which recruiters can quickly surface qualified talent, even before advertising a job.
Artificial intelligence plays a central role in the organization’s proactive sourcing efforts. While AI was embraced from the start, Virgin Media 02 has always ensured that recruiters remain in control of key decisions. Rather than using AI to automate skills parsing, recruiters curate and manually input job-specific skills, leading to more precise matching. This balanced approach prioritizes recruiter expertise while continuing to leverage AI’s recommendations and the efficiency gains they unlock.
We can see that there’s a shift, likely enabled by AI, in sourcing capabilities and CRM use. (…) It’s much more now about proactive sourcing, about using AI to surface candidates who might be a fit for that role, even before you advertise, even if you do need to advertise.”
Carrie Small
Talent Acquisition Excellence Manager, Virgin Media O2
Having flexible technology means the organization can stay agile in the face of new market demands. A clear example came when the organization needed to hire 250 field tech engineers in record time.
Traditionally, sourcing and screening at this scale would take two to three weeks. Recognizing the need for a bolder approach in order to meet the demand, the team quickly customized their workflow in Avature, built tailored questions and launched the Avature Video Interview solution in just seven days. The results exceeded expectations:
- Not only did they engage a large number of candidates, but 66 percent of them completed their video assessments within 12 hours.
- Automated scheduling allowed hiring managers to walk in the next business day with pre-booked interviews and 60 offers were extended within days.
This rapid deployment and impressive outcome demonstrate the value of pairing an innovation-first mindset with technology that can keep pace.
We’ve made a massive shift there, and the quality, the engagement and the feedback in real-time through our NPS and candidates is really positive.”
Sharron O’Donnell
Head of Talent Acquisition, Virgin Media O2
As part of their ongoing efforts to consolidate a data-driven talent acquisition function, Virgin Media O2 first turned to Avature to build its initial custom reports and TA dashboard, a decision they describe as a “no-regret move.” Over time, as the team’s expertise with the platform has grown, so has their ability to develop sophisticated reporting and analytics in-house.
The Results
Virgin Media O2’s shift to proactive sourcing is already delivering strong results. Just one year into their journey, they have achieved remarkable ROI:
- The organization saved £4.5 million by reducing reliance on job boards and decreasing agency spending by 30 percent.
- Direct sourcing surged 98 percent, even for complex tech and engineering roles.
- Overall, the time-to-hire shrank by 32 percent, averaging 40 days now.
Switching from post-and-pray and not relying on job adverts means that recruiters can source and engage talent instantaneously.”
Sharron O’Donnell
Head of Talent Acquisition, Virgin Media O2
Additionally, the adoption of best-in-class technology with advanced automation has redefined how recruiters spend their time:
- Before implementing Avature, recruiters could devote just 5 percent of their time to proactive sourcing. Today, that number has increased to 30 percent.
- Interview scheduling, which once consumed 25 percent of their time, now takes up only 10 percent thanks to Avature automation.
- Recruiters have also gained valuable time for relationship-building activities such as candidate communication and feedback. Now, 15 percent of their time is dedicated to these activities, up from just five percent prior to the merger and technology overhaul.
Virgin Media O2 has also seen significant improvements in stakeholder experiences. By integrating Net Promoter Score (NPS) feedback at every stage, the organization gains unparalleled insight into recruiter, hiring manager and candidate satisfaction. The candidate experience is especially critical, as a poor hiring journey can directly affect the business.
Forty-five million people in the UK are customers of Virgin Media O2. That’s huge. We know that half of the candidates who apply for jobs with us are our customers. If they have a bad recruitment experience, they have a bad view of us.”
Sharron O’Donnell
Head of Talent Acquisition, Virgin Media O2
By closely monitoring the candidate experience and capturing real-time feedback, the team gains visibility into areas for improvement and can, in turn, work to ensure that every interaction is as positive as possible. The result is a +66 NPS for candidates (including those who have been rejected), far surpassing the industry average.
Lastly, harmonizing teams and technology systems has allowed the company to establish a single way of working that strengthens compliance across the board.
What’s Next?
For Virgin Media O2, this success story is still being written. Moving forward, the focus will remain on increasing productivity and delivering faster and higher-quality outcomes.
Having implemented a best-in-class platform that serves as a foundation for continuous optimization, seamless integration and long-term scalability, the organization is doubling down on AI-driven sourcing, strengthening its talent communities and enhancing real-time analytics. The team is also working to bring the pre-boarding and onboarding processes into its Avature ecosystem.
To hear more about Virgin Media O2’s post-merger digital transformation in recruitment, tune into The Talent Transformation Podcast, where Kris Legroe, Director of People Technology, shares more insights into the organization’s evolution.
