About Network Plus
Network Plus is a leading utility and infrastructure service provider, delivering essential solutions to millions of customers across the UK. With a workforce of over 5,000 employees and more than 80 regional depots, Network Plus supports both urban and rural communities. Headquartered near Manchester, Network Plus manages projects from initial design to ongoing maintenance, with a strong commitment to safety, sustainability, and positive community impact.
To gain true visibility into recruitment performance and ROI, along with a scalable way to accelerate quality hiring across high-volume roles, Network Plus partnered with Appcast.
“Before partnering with Appcast, we were growing at a fast pace and were placing a large number of people, but our overall performance had declined significantly. This led us to look at Appcast – and after the first conversations with the team, we knew Appcast was the right move.”
— Will Pedigrew, Head of Talent Acquisition, Network Plus
Challenges
Prior to partnering with Appcast, Network Plus faced several key recruitment challenges:
- Limited Funnel Visibility: The talent acquisition team lacked end-to-end visibility into the recruitment funnel and ROI, making it difficult to pinpoint quality sources and identify where candidates stalled.
- Unreliable Reporting: Reporting was fragmented across many sites and teams, leading to inconsistent posting, screening, and feedback loops.
- Inconsistent Applicant Quality: High requisition volume for field roles resulted in uneven applicant quality and conversion rates by role and location.
- Lack of Centralised Data: Network Plus lacked a single source of truth to track apply-to-qualified applicant, which slowed decision-making and prolonged time-to-fill.
Solutions
To address these challenges, Network Plus implemented a data-driven, programmatic recruitment strategy:
- Programmatic Job Distribution: Network Plus launched Appcast’s programmatic solution to distribute job postings across a network of thousands of job and niche sites. Alongside this launch of Appcast’s programmatic technology, Network Plus also rolled out their new ATS. Introducing both solutions together drove quality applicants at scale, optimising bids and budgets toward key performance indicators (KPIs) rather than just click/apply volume.
- Shared KPI Framework: Network Plus established a unified set of KPIs including apply-to-qualified applicant, interview rate, offer rate, cost-per-qualified applicant, and time-to-fill. Appcast’s reporting was aligned to mirror the talent acquisition team’s view in their ATS. This shared framework created a consistent way to measure success and enabled more effective tracking of recruitment efforts.
- Data-Driven Process Improvements: By leveraging Appcast’s dashboard of analytics, Network Plus was able to identify roles that generated high applicant volume but underperformed against agreed quality thresholds. These insights empowered the talent acquisition team to engage hiring managers with actionable data, address process bottlenecks, and focus resources where they would have the greatest impact.
- Agile Optimisation & Coaching: Network Plus implemented rapid test-and-learn cycles across budgets, job titles, geo-targeting, and screening steps to uncover the most effective tactics for attracting and advancing candidates. In addition, the team introduced response Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and provided interview throughput coaching designed to accelerate candidate progression and continuously improve hiring outcomes.
“Since partnering with Appcast, improvement in performance has really stood out to me. We’ve seen an increase in candidates, higher-quality applicants, stronger pipelines for hard-to-fill roles, and a quicker time-to-hire.”
— Will Pedigrew, Head of Talent Acquisition, Network Plus
Results
- Network Plus made over 240 hires in 2025, with 115 of those directly attributed to Appcast sources.
- Network Plus has reduced hiring costs by approximately 44% since partnering with Appcast.
- In 2025, Network Plus achieved its strongest hiring year yet, marked by the lowest time-to-fill on record.
“Out of every supplier I’ve spoken to in the recruitment industry, no one has been better to work with than my Appcast team. I would 100% recommend Appcast to prospective customers.”
— Will Pedigrew, Head of Talent Acquisition, Network Plus
