The Challenge:
One of the joint winners at the 2010 Recruiter Awards for Excellence, supported by Innovate CV, for the most effective use of technology/online was national charity the British Heart Foundation (BHF). When you consider that up until the end of February last year, its recruitment was carried out manually, that’s a challenge worth investigating.

“Our recruitment was very administration based,” BHF’s recruitment manager Rebecca Birs told Recruiter. “Our challenge was to reduce the administration cost and time, as well as provide a more effective recruitment process for both our candidates and our hiring managers.” Not that the process in place was ineffective, Birs explained. “We’ve always had a quick turnaround at BHF. We respond to every application. We used to email applicants individually, even if they were unsuccessful. It’s good manners to treat people courteously, but we still maintained a quick turnaround.” And this personal attention to people brought with it an increased admin burden, which made the operation reactive rather than proactive.

With around 70 hiring managers UK-wide, looking to recruit roughly 300 staff annually across many varied roles and levels, the need for a technology solution to streamline the admin processes was becoming apparent. “Many of the hiring managers were remotely based and so needed remote access,” Birs said. “We also wanted to promote the BHF brand to better align applicants to the values of the charity.” And naturally, the cost savings would mean more money could be channelled into its core activity - saving lives.

The Solution:
Four software solutions firms were shortlisted, given a brief of the charity’s needs and asked to present their solution. Recruitment specialist eploy impressed BHF’s team with its package. “We felt eploy was able to offer us the flexibility BHF needed,” said Birs. “We laid down the ideas we wanted in a system and eploy came back with solutions.”

Technical director of eploy, Chris Bogh, told Recruiter: “Our system covers a wide range of uses and can be customised to roll-out to different clients. We spent a good deal of time understanding the business requirements. We met regularly to understand the processes from everyone’s point of view; for example, what the hiring managers needed, how they could speed up authorisation of their job ads.” Birs agreed: “With the hiring managers, job vacancies need to be approved and ads need to be checked. As a charity, especially, you’ve got to have the budget to approve vacancies.” The eploy solution meant that the system could take care of this process automatically, without relying on manual responses from the recruitment team or the chief executive, said Bogh.

On the specially designed recruitment website, hiring managers and candidates alike were offered a more efficient and enjoyable recruitment experience. “There’s a seamless integration with the BHF website,” Bogh explained. “Candidates can be put off applying if the application process sends you to another domain name.” The jobs portal, even though it is hosted by eploy, maintains the bhf.org.uk domain name. “And it maintains the links to other parts of the BHF website, such as how to volunteer and make donations, and what we stand for,” added Birs.

This last fact is perhaps the most important outcome from implementing eploy’s solution. The time saved in admin duties means the team can be more proactive in strengthening the BHF brand and promoting brand training. “Employees who are aligned fully with the values of the BHF are more likely to stay and more likely to be successful in helping us achieve our business objectives. We assess this at interview but also throughout the whole employment period by assessing at appraisals and performance reviews as well as driving these values through in advertising and training and development.” Birs said. “We’ve now got the time to upskill managers in the interview process, some of whom never had this training. It’s imperative to find the right people.” The recruitment team can now carry out detailed searches and find those candidates who weren’t the right fit for a particular role but may be perfect for others.

“By designing a bespoke system with eploy,” said Birs, “the site has amassed around 8,500 applicants. We’ve been able to build on our brand and hopefully become an employer of choice.”

Key lessons

• Nothing happens within the timescale you think it will happen in: changes have to be made before a system can be rolled out. But that’s a good thing - don’t rush it out. Test every aspect and be prepared to go over your timescale
• Include the whole team in your discussions for the system - not just IT or your web team. Have regular weekly meetings and brainstorm so it covers every angle for every user
• Set up a live dummy system to trial the software at every stage and check the new additions as the system is customised