Mitie used GaiaAttract to target, inform and nurture prison-custody applicants who were more likely to engage and succeed. The AI-guided funnel pushed assessment attendance up to 82% compared with a historic 50% and lifted pass rates to 40% versus the previous 20% benchmark, doubling the supply of qualified candidates.

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Introduction

For prison custody contracts, filling vacancies is only half the battle. Candidates also need to turn up for multi-stage assessments and prove they have the resilience, judgement and values to work behind the wire.

Before partnering with Gaia, Mitie’s internal team faced a frustrating pattern. Half the shortlisted applicants never arrived at the assessment centre. Of those who did, only one in five passed.

The result was spiralling re-advertising costs, overtime for existing officers and mounting pressure from the Ministry of Justice to stabilise staffing levels.

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The problem

Mitie’s hiring funnel was leaking quality at three points:

• Drop-off after click. Many candidates clicked an advert but abandoned during the lengthy application.
• No-shows. Only about 50% of invited applicants arrived on assessment day, wasting panel time and budget.
• Low pass rate. Roughly 20% of attendees achieved the threshold score, forcing recruiters back to square one.
  

These issues stretched average time-to-hire to eight weeks and left critical posts unfilled.

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Gaia’s solution

Mitie brought in Gaia to rebuild the funnel with a focus on engagement, expectation setting and data-driven optimisation.

Audience modelling

GaiaAttract analysed thousands of previous campaigns to predict where highly engaged, values-aligned candidates spend time online. Spend was weighted across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X and TikTok according to live conversion data.

Realistic job preview

Creative assets featured real custody staff explaining shift patterns, training and career paths.

Sequential nurturing

Candidates who watched a video or clicked an ad were retargeted across all the social media platforms that they used.

Live funnel intelligence

A shared dashboard tracked every step from first view to pass outcome. When no-show risk spiked in one postcode, ads were paused there and budget reallocated to higher-yield areas within twenty four hours.

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Results

In the first nine months the quality focused campaign reshaped Mitie’s hiring economics.

Attendance and pass-rate gains meant Mitie needed far fewer applications to hit the same hiring target, freeing recruiters to focus on candidate care rather than constant resourcing.

What these numbers meant day to day

Here’s how those improvements translated into everyday wins for the operation:

• Assessment centres ran at full capacity, reducing wasted assessor hours.
• Hiring managers saw richer shortlists with better cultural fit and fewer withdrawals.
• Operational gaps closed sooner, cutting overtime spend and improving staff morale.

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Looking ahead

Mitie plans to extend the engagement blueprint to new justice sites and testing it in defence contracts. Upcoming pilots will add personalised SMS reminders and micro-learning modules to push pass rates even higher.