The People and Culture team at The Consortium Clemenger was looking for an ATS and CRM that could be a single source of truth, streamlining communication with candidates and within their team.
The team was struggling with manual processes, lots of Excel spreadsheets, a lack of visibility over each other’s work and impossible reporting.
For a little bit of background, The Consortium Clemenger connects sales and marketing fulfilment services for some of the world’s biggest brands, from end-to-end e-commerce to warehousing and logistics, POS kitting and promotions and eco-commerce.
So, its People and Culture team needed to be able to recruit permanent and temporary staff efficiently and quickly, leveraging cutting-edge technologies.
We recently sat down with Melissa Green, Talent Acquisition Consultant at The Consortium Clemenger, to discuss how they moved from all manual processes to a consolidated, streamlined and consistent recruitment process with the JobAdder ATS and CRM.
Key results:
- Reducing time to screen and process applications by 40%
- Implementing email templates and standardising candidate communications
- Removing single-point sensitivity to cut out roadblocks and inefficiencies
- Only needing to raise one support ticket in six months, making the most of easy, self-serve learning and training in JobAdder
Keep reading to discover the full story of The Consortium Clemenger’s talent acquisition transformation!
Escaping Excel and manual admin hell
Many in-house HR teams understand the hell that is a million Excel spreadsheets, requiring heaps of manual admin to keep them updated and avoiding duplicate data. Melissa and her team were ready for a recruitment software that allowed them to escape the inconsistencies and single-point sensitivity of Excel.
“We certainly were all manual, we had no systems,” says Melissa. “We used Microsoft Excel, that was as sophisticated as we got. That presented some challenges for us, like inconsistency in tracking and inconsistency in the communication we had with our candidates. The other big challenge I would highlight is it was hard to track candidates across multiple platforms.”
“We were already using some varied platforms, but to then track one role against multiple platforms was certainly challenging. And it made recruitment within our business single-point sensitive. So one person really owned the spreadsheet. One person owned the role, only one person could update on where the status was. It was very hard to get a visibility of other people’s work, without the one system that everyone could access. It was also challenging from a reporting perspective. There was inconsistency in how data was gathered and what data was gathered per role, which made reporting very hard.”
Finding an ATS and CRM that streamlined, standardised and centralised
Melissa states that they needed a recruitment CRM and Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that centralised their talent acquisition activity, provided team-wide visibility and accessibility and standardised communication with candidates.
“We were looking for a platform that would help us consolidate the multiple job platforms we were using. We wanted everything in one spot. We wanted an easily accessible, quick list of applicants in one location, and we also wanted to easily be able to upload roles to our own website, which used to be a bit of a challenge.”
“We also wanted the ability for multiple team members from our business to be able to access, update, view where we’re at and scroll through correspondence. We wanted people to be able to jump in the system, check where they’re at and continue working, as opposed to taking time to be updated individually and going through multiple spreadsheets.”
“We also wanted the ability to standardise communication to our candidates. As we were very manual in the past, all correspondence to candidates were handwritten emails by people. So whilst the sentiment might have been generally the same, wording was inconsistent between roles, between people in the business, etc. So the ability to standardise the communication that we are giving to candidates was less of a priority, but was certainly on the wishlist.”
When comparing solutions, there were a few significant call-outs that immediately differentiated JobAdder from the pack.
Melissa says, “the immediate huge call out for us was that consolidation of job platforms in one space. It was very simple. Now it’s easy to list on our website, it’s more efficient in terms of just having to do one upload for a job ad across multiple platforms. In the past, we would have to access each platform individually. Another huge call out is that multiple team members can access JobAdder and understand the status of roles and see the communication.”
“A very basic example I have from the other day is a fellow team member had been assigned a phone interview with a candidate. It was a time prior to my start time at work, so I wasn’t available to help. And she was able to log in, read the correspondence and see that the candidate had sent me an email saying, “I’m unwell, I can’t do the call this morning.” That ability to continue the process and not be single-point sensitive certainly addressed one of our major pain points, which was excellent.”
Excellent implementation, onboarding and training
Implementing and learning the JobAdder system was a seamless process for Melissa and her team with a dedicated implementations and onboarding consultant.
“We worked with Aimee for the implementation and onboarding and she was excellent. The Zoom sessions we had were brilliant. I would highlight that Aimee was incredibly accessible. Like if I had a question, I could just shoot her a note and she would quickly reply. She was very solution oriented and very good at listening to our particular needs for our business and then working out how that could be implemented in JobAdder, which was great.”
Melissa also emphasised the comprehensiveness of the in-platform training tutorials, allowing her to self-serve her learning and development.
“The ability to go back and review the online training in the system and invite team members to particular sessions was great. Even now, six months in, if I have a mental blank, the ability to just quickly type it in the help bar and for the training session to pop up and say, “click here, here’s what you need to do” is really great.”
“You don’t have to stop. I think I’ve only reached out to the help desk once in the last six months. More often than not, I’m able to quickly type my query in the help bar and some type of tutorial will come up to answer my question, so that’s excellent, especially from a productivity perspective.”
Improved productivity and candidate communication
This productivity doesn’t just stop at the training capabilities, Melissa says the team has seen huge shifts in how they work with each other and communicate.
“The People and Culture team are really ingrained in the JobAdder platform. Immediately, we’ve seen improvements in candidate tracking and visibility across the roles and platforms and where they’re at. That’s a key call out from my team. No longer do we have to get on the phone and check with each other. We can just jump in, check the notes and off we go.”
“The other key call out is how much easier it is to communicate and track the candidates as well. We were looking for a consistent, standardised approach in terms of communication. We now have the ability to preload email responses that we give to candidates, so now it’s just a dropdown.”
“We’ve really appreciated that standardisation of the communication to candidates and it has not only improved productivity, but I think it has generally lifted our recruitment process and the experience that the candidate gets from their perspective.”
Reducing time to screen and process applications by 40%
One amazing result that The Consortium Clemenger has seen is significant improvements in the speed to screen and assess applicants for roles.
Melissa explains, “a very basic example I can give is the type of recruitment we do is mostly in full-time positions, but we also do some casual recruitment as well. In the past, I would run numbers on our time spent per role and without JobAdder we would spend an average of about 10 minutes per applicant, in terms of that initial assessment, pulling data, entering it into an Excel spreadsheet, all that kind of jazz.”
“With JobAdder, we’ve now got that time down to about six minutes now per applicant, so a 40% improvement in time spent screening.”
Detailed, easy reporting with JobAdder
Another big benefit for Melissa and the People and Culture team was JobAdder’s Analytics function, allowing them to quickly assess key results and metrics and report on them, both within their team and to the wider business.
“In the past, it was difficult for us to quickly report on a role. With JobAdder, there’s so much information just on the jobs listed home screen, but then we’ve also got the ability in the reports function to access preloaded reports. I have noticed in most instances, if someone in the business asks me a question, there’s normally a preloaded report that I can just click on and access already.”
“A very specific example is someone in the business asked me recently, what is our average days to close a role? In the past, that would’ve been incredibly challenging to answer that question. But with JobAdder, I could just jump in and go to the reports function and there’s already a report built for that. I could manipulate the time period, looking at the last month or last six months, whatever the case may be, and quickly report back on that answer. Whereas in the past, I would’ve really had to spend time analysing list dates and closed dates on multiple platforms, and then trying to work out an average.”
“It also helps just within our own team as well, not just reporting back to the business. We’re quite a tight People and Culture team, so the ability to quickly discuss times to close or other metrics has certainly made us think differently about recruitment in the last six months.”
