The devil is in the detail
For a growing recruitment business, agility is key. The need to develop a centralised hub for all their agency data spurred Melbourne-based agency Aspect Personnel to transition to JobAdder more than a decade ago.
“One thing I have learned about recruitment consulting over the last 10 years is that the more effort it takes to record information, the less likely you are to do it,” explained Matt Sampson, Aspect’s Managing Director. “So one of the drivers behind transitioning to JobAdder was just that it’s so user-intuitive, it’s so simple to use and it’s easy for our consultants to record everything.”
It’s about the experience
At the time, Aspect’s existing ATS was still in its beta phase, a “clunky, hard-to- customise” system that came with “big delays in customer service.” JobAdder was initially used as a multi-loader [for job posting] and “we just had such an awesome experience,” said Matt.
When it came time to implement JobAdder as an RMS, Matt noted that the platform “was the most user-intuitive RMS that [he’d] seen. Getting people up to speed on JobAdder is so straightforward. We’ve got people here who are up and running within 3-4 days.”
A data-centric approach
One aspect Matt enjoyed the most was dealing with JobAdder’s co-founders. “To understand the roadmap for JobAdder, its mission and see how well that aligned with our own mission and journey, made me feel like our business growth was in parallel. We bought into that journey and wanted to be a part of it,” said Matt.
Fast forward to today and Aspect’s 18-strong recruitment team are focused on delivering a world-class service to their clients and candidates. “I want to build and grow an amazing team where people want to come and work every day. We want to build careers and businesses, our clients’ and our own,” said Matt.
With JobAdder’s intuitive approach to recruitment, Matt can make use of the data the agency gathers on every level, from individual recruiters, to teams and for the business as a whole. “Candidate source is a great example to identify where our placements are being generated, where our candidates are coming into our community from,” explained Matt. He added that a few consultants had also analysed fill rates of exclusive versus non-exclusive jobs, “so the great thing about JobAdder is that we can customise our fields to enable consultants to record data useful for their desks as well as data that would benefit the team and the business.
“We are moving into a data-driven society and I think that JobAdder does a great job of capturing that data.”
Matt added that JobAdder’s analytics platform PowerAdder “is an awesome tool to add another layer of analysis. This is really beneficial for me as a business owner, as it allows me to understand some of the opportunities and bottlenecks we’re facing as a business and with individuals in the business.
“I think a big mistake that we can make in recruitment is we try and solve the wrong problem, whereas the data we can pull out of JobAdder and in particular PowerAdder, allows us to understand the problem or the challenge or bottleneck, so that we can spend our time and energy solving the right problem,” he said.
Take analytics around job boards. “We spend a lot of money on advertising through various sources,” explained Matt, adding that it was very hard to measure the ROI for this. “ROI for us is the billings, the revenue we’ve produced as a result of candidates we’ve attracted from particular advertising sources, so by utilising the data on JobAdder, we can see exactly how much we’ve spent with various advertising sources.
“We can see the number of candidates that we’ve been able to attract, the number of candidates that we’ve interviewed, the number of candidates that we’ve sent to our clients, the number of candidates that have been interviewed by clients and really importantly, the number of candidates who have been successfully placed into roles,” said Matt.
“All the analysis we’ve been able to conduct over the last 10 years within JobAdder that we wouldn’t have been able to on our previous ATS makes the cost unquantifiable, because it would be that significant,” added Matt.
One piece of advice Matt gives when he refers the platform to others, is “have JobAdder manage the data and transfer. That’s one thing we did.
“We underestimated the size of the task to transfer data from our old RMS to our new one,” said Matt, adding that this became apparent as soon as the handover was complete. “It was done not only accurately but incredibly efficiently as well. So the other piece of advice that I give and I certainly learned was measure twice, cut once.”
With data helping to inform the agency’s growth plans, Matt believes that Victoria is still a great source of opportunity given the current infrastructure spend. “Our vision has always been to have the capability, capacity and trusted reputation to provide recruitment solutions to businesses operating in the built and natural environments…so there’s work to be done in Victoria.”
JobAdder will be there to support Aspect every step of the way.
“For me, there are three things about JobAdder that not only keep us loyal but have us advocating the company to our industry colleagues: the simplicity of the system, the innovative mindset of the business where they are the first to develop a product and grow, and the relationship we have with JobAdder.
“The transparency with which JobAdder runs its business and the openness of the company when they talk about the journey they are going on, is an invitation to be a part of that journey. It’s really exciting and engaging for us,” said Matt.
“We feel more like a partner and I think that’s really important for our business. We like to think of our “suppliers” more so like partners and they’re the ones we enjoy doing business with the most.”
