Method to the madness
Family owned and operated for more than 35 years, Burbank has evolved into a multi-faceted national business covering the full spectrum of building industry services. The subsidiary brands that form the 900-strong group include plumbing and home building, through to a storage facility and even an aviation business!
“The theory behind the unique business model is that it allows customers to experience a seamless homebuying process guided by experts,” explains Patrick Mylonas, Burbank’s People, Culture & Performance Manager.
“While the business’ heritage is home building, the size and diversity of the group has meant we’ve been able to expand our offering over the years to meet demand, such as focusing on the medium-density space, where we can now build numerous townhouses in one allotment.”
Burbank was established in Melbourne in 1983 with the creation of the award-winning Burbank Homes. About nine years ago, Burbank expanded into Brisbane. This was followed by South Australia in 2015, and then the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales in 2016. “It’s quite a diverse group and there are a lot of people with different expertise that work for these subsidiary brands. It keeps us on our toes!” said Patrick.
Bringing recruitment back in-house
Prior to Burbank’s transition to using JobAdder three years ago, the company tackled recruitment externally through an agency and internally, through a manual mix of Outlook and OneNote.
“It was really challenging. We outsourced it all but found that it wasn’t working for us. Initially, it was meant to reduce the workload for us as we just didn’t have the internal resources to manage the recruitment function. We found it wasn’t cost-effective and we weren’t getting the high-quality candidates that we required.
“It ended up being beneficial for us to bring recruitment back in-house. The external agency was using Job Adder so we thought it would be worthwhile to have a discussion around what the business could do for us,” said Patrick.
Three years later, Patrick agreed Job Adder was meeting Burbank’s expectations. “We’ve got a great candidate database and we’re able to track the progress of each position.”
When it came to being trained on JobAdder, Patrick appreciated the hands-on approach. “With the training, we were able to get in there and start using the system while we were being trained, which was really good.”
Paid for itself
For Burbank, JobAdder’s reporting features have proven particularly useful. “We couldn’t capture any data previous to having JobAdder and monthly reporting was a nightmare. JobAdder makes it so much easier and delivers useful insights that shape our ongoing recruitment activity,” said Patrick.
“I think JobAdder has paid for itself. Previously we found we’d get all these applications and they would be mixed up with our other emails and we’d miss things. Now everything is under a specific job, we know who to contact and can do a bulk email to the recruiting manager to take a look at the candidates. I think there’s more scope to ensure we’re using it to its full potential,” he added.
Now the team uses Hiring Manager with all managers getting trained on the product. “Every time a manager needs a position filled, they complete a request, it goes to the approving manager to sign and JobAdder automatically populates, and we can go through the hiring process from there. It’s streamlined our whole approach, which is fantastic.”
Recommending JobAdder
So what would Patrick focus on when recommending JobAdder to other recruiters? “I would say it has allowed us to streamline our recruitment process and posting an ad is so much easier. You just have to do it once and don’t have to go into four different programs, which is fantastic. Finally, the ability to export data straight out of Job Adder is really useful.”
