Sleepmasters, one of the UK’s largest bed retailers, has reduced its average vacancy length from over 50 days to 22 using the Engage Recruitment Technology from Blue Octopus.

Noel Jolly, head of HR at Sleepmasters, which is the first company to use the product, told Recruiter that the simplicity of the system and its self-sifting abilities are the two main reasons for the improvement. “We have a system that has reduced spend and crucially time spent on recruitment for our sales managers. A store manager who has never seen the system can be given enough information to use it effectively in 15 minutes over the phone,” he says. “This year is the first year of the last eight where we have entered our busiest trading period fully staffed.”

The retailer has 180 locations nationwide, including stores, a network of four distribution centres and headquarters in Accrington in the North-West of England, and all of these are integrated into the web-based e-recruitment platform. Jolly said the system has also proved invaluable in the visibility of recruitment activity and has enabled them to closely monitor line managers when they are involved in the process. “The system makes this easy because of the audit trail that clearly shows on each vacancy,” he said.

Jolly could not comment on the impact on recruitment spend yet but said the company is well “ahead of budget this year”, whereas last year it overspent.

The Engage family of e-recruitment systems has been developed by West Yorkshire-based Blue Octopus Software Solutions, a division of recruiter Blue Octopus Recruitment. All the software development work is done in-house by a team led by brothers Talvinder and Sandeep Nagra.

Blue Octopus itself specialises in flat-free recruitment advertising and candidate management services, and the Engage technology is based on a system it developed for its own use.

Chris Coleman, a former headhunter who founded the company with his brother Liam, said they decided to develop a version for clients after listening to clients’ frustrations about other systems.

“We took on board their comments of it needing to be really simple to use and easily rolled out to line managers. Every implementation is bespoke and can fit in with a client’s processes,” said Coleman, who has been involved in online recruitment for several years. “One element, for instance, takes into account a vacancy requisition process that has to take place first.”

Applicants apply online and are screened and managed through the system. As well as a filtering system, the features include a talent pool facility, which can help to reduce advertising and re-advertising costs. Candidates can register for alerts when a job becomes available at the company and be matched to particular roles according to their preferences.

www.blueoctopus.co.uk