Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

e-business 5-minute Q & A

by Personnel Today 4 Jul 2000
by Personnel Today 4 Jul 2000

David Evans, 40, is head of HR at financial services company Virgin Direct and its e-business spin-off Virginmoney.com which launched last week. The dotcom aims to compete with the likes of Egg and Fidelity.com. It employs 140 permanent and contract staff; average age is 44


PT You’re a traditional HR manager, how did you make the move to a dotcom company?


DE I was headhunted by Virgin Direct from Independent Insurance. We started the Virginmoney.com project last November. If you had have asked me 12 months ago if I ever saw myself working at a dotcom company I would have said “no”. I wasn’t looking to leave Independent Insurance but you don’t get the chance to set up a new company every day of the week – not of this size or scale.


PT Why do you think you were you headhunted?


DE Virgin Direct was four years old when I joined in 1999 – the same age as Independent Insurance when I joined it in 1992 – so there were lots of parallels, such as getting professional HR practices and strategies in place, building the profile of HR in the business and adding value to all that we do.


PT What have been the main challenges recruiting for an e-business?


DE There have been two main ones – finding specialist IT people and working out the right rewards and benefit strategy. Several e-businesses have gone down the route of “selling the dream of being millionaires” through the successful growth of the dotcom business. Evidence has shown that Amazon.com has had to reconsider its strategies as its share price slides. We are focusing on salaries, bonuses linked to retention and a range of flexible benefits to suit the profile of our staff.


PT You mentioned recruitment, what methods have you used?


Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

OptOut
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

DE We placed job adverts on Monster.co.uk, The Sunday Times and two computer magazines. Candidates responded to a recruitment company in Manchester. We use a screen-to-screen system whereby candidates first watch a video about the company and its culture and are then given the option of deselecting if they wish. If they’re still interested, they go through an interview and psychometric testing. They are interviewed and filmed on a camcorder. They are all asked the same questions. The interviews are put onto CD-Rom and sent to us to watch so we can de-select if we wish. In one hour we can see footage of 15 candidates which would have taken something like five-and-half hours to see them traditionally.

Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

previous post
Career file: Vivianne Child
next post
Test article. Please disregard

You may also like

Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders receive 400% pay rise

4 Jul 2025

FCA to extend misconduct rules beyond banks

2 Jul 2025

‘Decisive action’ needed to boost workers’ pensions

2 Jul 2025

Business leaders’ drop in confidence impacts headcount

2 Jul 2025

Why we need to rethink soft skills in...

1 Jul 2025

Five misconceptions about hiring refugees

20 Jun 2025

Forward features list 2025 – submitting content to...

23 Nov 2024

Features list 2021 – submitting content to Personnel...

1 Sep 2020

Large firms have no plans to bring all...

26 Aug 2020

A typical work-from-home lunch: crisps

24 Aug 2020

  • Empowering working parents and productivity during the summer holidays SPONSORED | Businesses play a...Read more
  • AI is here. Your workforce should be ready. SPONSORED | From content creation...Read more

Personnel Today Jobs
 

Search Jobs

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2025

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2025 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+