As the largest ex-service organisation in the state, RSL Queensland provides practical support, assistance and advice to current and former Australian Defence Force members and their families in a state-wide network of sub-branches.
Zach Wright, Business Relationship Manager, works for RSL Queensland’s Employment Program. He explains that support programs are a core component of RSL Queensland’s foundations.
“RSL Queensland has been around for 107 years. Since our inception, we’ve been driven to help veterans and their family members, including partners of current serving defence members with many of our service offerings. We now have a variety of service arms, with programs and people at the ready to help veterans and their families achieve their life goals. These different services assist with employment, scholarships, wellness programs, homelessness, advocacy, emergency financial support, accommodation services, bereavement support and more. We also established Mates4Mates, which has become one of the country’s leading charities providing physical, psychological and social support services to the Defence community.”
“In terms of RSL Queensland’s Employment Program, we are an end-to-end employment program resembling an external recruitment service or provider. What sets us apart is that we provide further personalised and tailored options for our veteran community. Our services are free to veterans, their partners and our employment partner organisations, fully funded by RSL Queensland.”
“RSL Queensland’s Employment program is free to all of the businesses we work with, and it’s free to all of our clients as well.”
The right support
This vital work does require large-scale recruitment and extensive relationship management with a wide range of businesses. Zach and his team needed a recruitment software solution that could streamline job posting, application processing and candidate tracking and management.
“I’ve been with the team for a year, but the program has been running for five years,” states Zach. “My role was a newly created role to come in and try and figure out what to do with all of the employer contacts we had and how to manage the jobs.”
“We had no systems before, we didn’t even have a HR system that we were using. We had 1,200 employer contacts and around 4,000 jobs listed in a CRM that was not designed to capture jobs. The CRM system we use is really wonderful in terms of our client tracking, we’ve built it out well for that, but when you’re trying to match that person to a job in the system, it was extremely difficult. So, JobAdder was a long time coming for the program.”
“We had 1,200 employer contacts and around 4,000 jobs listed in a CRM that was not designed to capture jobs.”
Powering recruitment across RSL Queensland
Six months ago, JobAdder was implemented into RSL Queensland’s Employment Program, but it wasn’t a new system for the organisation. Their in-house HR team had already used JobAdder for 18 months, managing the recruitment of its internal RSL Queensland roles, and recommended JobAdder to Zach and his team.
“Prior to JobAdder, our internal HR team didn’t have any recruitment-specific talent system or software that they were using,” says Zach. “They had a HR system, but it really didn’t have that talent aspect to it, so it was very manual in terms of their process in tracking candidates. We’ve got about four different divisions that have very different skill sets and needs and roles. With JobAdder, it’s allowed them across those divisions to keep up to date with where applicants are coming from. If a talent team member is unavailable, they can see the notes and where those candidates are up to, which has been very helpful. They’ve also purchased the Hiring Manager Portal function as well to get a bit more out of JobAdder, which is something that they’ve really liked.”
“I know that they looked at three or four different systems when they were initially going for JobAdder and JobAdder came out on top.”
When Zach came onboard to streamline RSL Queensland’s Employment Program, he began discussing internally the best way to manage the huge number of employer contacts and jobs on the program’s plate.
JobAdder was the natural solution; a system that the organisation was already using that could manage both in-house talent acquisition and external recruitment. Through discussions with JobAdder, Zach and the team decided to set up a separate account and instance for his team, ensuring that all client and candidate data was kept separate to the in-house HR team’s data.
“Initially we were looking at using the same instance for both programs, but with JobAdder’s support we were able to set up a separate instance, which means we can keep all of our clients separate, and all of our reporting and data separate, which has been really wonderful.”
“JobAdder has enabled us to launch a jobs board listing employment opportunities for our ex-serving community and their partners. We can now track current client applications, house our open vacancies, and also capture new client leads through the jobs board as well. This has been a really great addition to the standard Expression of Interest form that we have on our website. Prior to JobAdder, we were using that CRM system to manage employer contacts, which was just not fit for purpose.”
Thankfully, the onboarding and training process with JobAdder has been the opposite experience with Zach emphasising the usability and simplicity of the system. “JobAdder has in-built training modules and we were also offered a couple of onboarding sessions as well, which was really lovely. The software’s very easy to use. If you’ve used another system before or a CRM, you will notice it’s very easy to navigate.”
“JobAdder is very user-friendly and the training is really useful, it’s quite easy to just jump in and have a go.”
Over 436 employers, 335 applications and 450 open jobs through JobAdder
For Zach and RSL Queensland’s Employment Program team, the ability to build a jobs board that they own and advertise the wide range of employment opportunities to veterans and their partners was huge.
“The biggest selling point for us was being able to use that jobs board functionality. Before JobAdder, we were attracting clients (as in veteran and partner candidates that we could help place) via an Expression of Interest form on our website. But now, we have the jobs board function. People can come in and apply for a role, we capture their information, and then we can onboard them onto our program.”
“The jobs board went live in February and in the past five or so months, we’ve had over 335 applications through the jobs board, and that’s veterans and veterans’ partners specifically applying for roles. In that same time, we’ve had over 436 employers actively engage with us using JobAdder functionality.”
“On average, we have about 300 open jobs per month available to the veteran community through this platform.”
Zach explains that this functionality was crucial in freeing up time for the program’s consultants and empowering them to focus on placing veteran clients in the best roles for them.
“The reason that they created my role was because previously our employment consultants would run a caseload of clients, of people that they were working with, but they would also have to jump in and help with businesses as well. We were finding that our consultants, while working with both businesses and clients, spent a lot of time trying to work with the businesses and it took away from time spent effectively managing the clients.”
“So when I came in, in the first six months of my role, we had 350+ new employer engagements reaching out to us. Consultants had to take inquiries, I took inquiries, it was busy. I’ve since brought somebody into my team and this year not one employer inquiry has gone to a consultant. All of them have been managed by myself and my staff member, which now means that our consultants work directly with our veterans and partners and don’t have to worry about any of the employer workload. They can now have all of those conversations that they need to have with the candidates and not worry about the backend jobs side of things.”
These changes have allowed the program to flourish, rapidly expanding how many employers they can work with and how many veterans they can place. Zach believes that the support from JobAdder has been instrumental in this evolution.
“I just really want to thank everyone that we’ve worked with at JobAdder. It’s been wonderful. We have a whole other aspect of our program now that we can offer to the veteran community that we never had before. It certainly was something that we never knew we needed.”
“Again, with over 300 open jobs every month, 335 applications that we wouldn’t have attained previously, I think it’s really starting to generate some interest. When I talk to an employer, instead of saying, ‘we’ll take that away and talk to a couple of people,’ I can say, ‘we can do something for you right now, within 15 minutes it can be live on our jobs board and shared with all of our networks.’”
