FROM FEBRUARY 2014's RECRUITER MAGAZINE

An online self-service recruitment platform has launched out of beta testing, which allows organisations to manage their recruitment advertising and processes from one site. 

Ben Barney, managing director of Krooter.co.uk, told Recruiter that with self-service principles being applied to other business processes, recruitment is also “ripe” for such treatment. 

“Be it email marketing campaigns, online advertising or online accountancy, digitally-savvy individuals are taking more control of their business processes,” he said. “We’re majoring on self-service from end-to-end and using technology to empower people to make the right decisions. So, for example, on job board selection we’ll make recommendations based on job role and location but the user has total control and can choose their own.”

Barney explains that the service is typically used by small- to mid-sized companies for “average salary” permanent roles for which agency fees are hard to justify or recruiters do not have the time to recruit directly. Users pay a single fee of £299 per advertisement and this allows them to post to five different job boards (it currently has links with 40 of the main job boards but plans to include all UK boards eventually). Those who recruit in larger numbers can buy credit up front, called Krootons, and the more Krootons they buy, the cheaper the service becomes. The price can come down to £175 for one advert to five boards.

Krooter provides help when writing job advertisements if required and templates for various tasks, and also acts as an applicant tracking system when candidates apply. What adds real value to the service for the user though is the intelligence built into the system. Algorithms will help to create a shortlist of candidates and also deduce which job boards will be best for that position. “There are a lot of tasks that zap your time and we’ve put effort into the areas that will deliver real value,” explained Barney, who added that a team of account managers provide a human element to the shortlisting to make sure the algorithms are working as well as they could be.

One of the organisations involved in the beta testing was the business-to-business sales accelerator company, SCI Sales Group. Bridget Kelly, head of HR and learning and development at the company, has used it to recruit for a range of positions including business development, account management and data related roles. 

“The concept is really good and it works,” she said. “I’ve used services before where you pay a fee and a job appears on five job boards, but they don’t offer all of the other functionality. The way it flags up the relevance of CVs is really useful and accurate. You certainly get the numbers and quality of candidates. I recruited five business development managers from one posting.”

Kelly said among the other features she liked about the service were the metrics and statistics, presented in a simple graph, which tell you which job boards/channels have been most effective. “I’m more likely to try a niche/bespoke job board, as the risk is minimised because of the luxury of using five job boards,” she said. “We try to be as objective and scientific in our recruitment process as possible but there is always some trial and error. We’re in a period of growth this year so my team are going to be really busy. Krooter helps to make us more efficient with our time.”