Case studies

Adecco fills 30,000 Census jobs with JobAdder and Workforce Verification

“It was about having an accessible solution that was not limited by geography. We needed candidates to be able to apply from anywhere and we needed to be able to deal with large volumes of applications.”

Adecco was tasked with a huge challenge in 2021; recruiting more than 30,000 Census jobs across Australia in just a few months.

The leading recruitment agency was brought on board by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to quickly scale up its temporary workforce to conduct the 2021 Census, which provides a crucial snapshot of the nation and informs government, community and business.

Adecco knew that this high-volume project would need strong technology solutions and support, so Jason McGregor, Programme Director for Adecco ABS 2021 Census Recruitment, turned to JobAdder and Australia Post’s Workforce Verification tool.

Building a 30,000-strong workforce

The building blocks of such a high-volume project were complex, so Jason says there was a range of demands and needs that had to be met. “If you’re recruiting 10 or 50 or 100 people, challenges become significantly bigger as the numbers rise. A small problem rapidly becomes a big problem when the numbers to recruit reaches the thousands and tens of thousands.”

“Within the 30,000 vacancies, there were 23 different roles. Being able to customize not only the application process, but the suite of tools and processes was also creating complexity. We needed to be able to provide a streamlined process, for the candidates and for the client.”

“It was about having an accessible solution that was not limited by geography. We needed candidates to be able to apply from anywhere and we needed to be able to deal with large volumes of applications. We needed to integrate the most common solutions and the key partners to reduce the complexity and risk of human error. There are distinct challenges when attracting, screening, short-listing and engaging more than 30,000 Census staff in such a short timeframe.”

In addition to technology that could be customised and flexible, Jason said they also required strong foundations. “We needed a track record of stability and security. We needed to be able to deliver a credible solution that would provide assurance to the client. Hand on heart, we needed to be able to advise the client that our solution, our tools, could handle the volumes in a secure manner.”

“We also needed all data to be kept in Australia. It’s a federal government project. So, while we needed all the flexibility, we also needed the stability and security.”

Streamlining strict checks

One of the key components of this solution was streamlining the mandatory police checks that were required for Census roles. Jason says that Australia Post’s Workforce Verification integration with JobAdder enabled them to automate this crucial step in the recruitment process.

“Being able to issue police checks and Workforce Verification requests directly out of JobAdder with a couple of simple steps was fantastic. Particularly when you consider the volume of candidates and jobs – we sent out 18,000 police check requests in a week.

To be able to do that directly out of JobAdder and have the results come in and to be able to track them from within JobAdder was really handy. We could track what was happening in real time. As the results are validated, they come directly back in. We had hundreds of results coming in throughout a day, that was really great.”

In the past, police checks could be a significant bottleneck in the recruitment process, so this one-click integration proved essential for the Adecco team.

“I appreciate the quick turnaround because the biggest allocation of time within the recruitment process was always the police check – it was literally out of our hands. Going back to the streamlining, it was essential to compress the timeframes as much as possible.”

Easily tracking candidate progress and nudging them to complete actions through JobAdder and Workforce Verification simplified the recruitment process.

“It was great to be able to see the progression of the candidates. Our outbound team could see if someone had been invited to do a police check and hadn’t done it yet, they could reach out and see if they needed any help.”

“There was a range of actions that we could take to prompt the candidate to complete the process. We would be able to see when there wasn’t any action… for most of our roles, the police check was the step that created the greatest burden. So many more records were able to be verified digitally, Australia Post has put such great work into reducing those burdens.”