“If I don’t feel I could trust somebody to care for a member of my own family, then they are unlikely to be working for Walsingham Support”, says Tony Ferrari, Walsingham’s Talent Acquisition Manager. Tony has a rich background in recruiting, life coaching and running his own businesses. He was the ideal person to build Walsingham’s in-house recruiting function.

Building a recruiting function

“we can now highlight and impose our values within the recruiting process”, says Tony. “Values alignment and competency matter. We are establishing ways of measuring these attributes to increase certainty in our selection.”

Tony raises a number of good points. Even when an agent relationship is exclusive, the recruiting process is shared and control of the candidate experience can be lost. Agents can also send applicants to several employers. Artificial competition is always avoided when recruiting directly. Tony agrees; “poor matches, irregular interview attendance and managing counter-offers are just some of the common symptoms when hiring via agents”.

Starting from scratch, Tony tasked himself with finding the right recruitment technology and hiring a team of recruiters and QA staff. He started by comparing a range of recruiting systems available for employers.

Selecting the best recruitment system

Tony knows his way around the market. His significant experience of recruitment and compliance systems was invaluable. He knew what was required, what was available and what works in practice. Tony hadn’t seen CVMinder ATS, but reached out. “Having previously helped an education charity, I knew CVMinder was strong in that sector too. With a focus on both education and care, the system would have to be solid on process and compliance.”

“I fully reviewed all the major ATS providers and attended seven demonstrations. There are some fabulous options out there, but they do much more than we need and cost much more than we wanted to spend. Protecting a charity means spending their money as if it were my own. CVMinder ATS offered the best value for money by quite a margin” says Tony.

Easy to use ATS for a fraction of the cost

Tony selected CVMinder ATS because it appeared to be simple, effective and able to grow to meet future requirements too. “Let’s be clear. CVMinder ATS does not beat all competitor Applicant Tracking Systems on function. I could argue that some systems have too many features. However, the functions we actually need and use in practice are all supported within CVMinder ATS and the system is incredibly easy to use.” All things considered, choosing CVMinder ATS was an easy decision to make. “We have a lot of function for a fraction of the cost elsewhere and we weren’t being locked into lengthy contract periods either.”

CVMinder ATS in practice

So, how has CVMinder ATS worked in practice? According to Tony, the setup was painless and fast. He found that training was excellent and the support has been second to none. “They have been listening to our ideas too. We have asked for several additions and the team has bent over backwards to accommodate us. In my experience, you just don’t get that sort of attention with most vendors. This is a significant departure from my past experiences of fractional interest, months of waiting and a large bill at the end.”

With CVMinder ATS in place, successes came quickly. Despite being a new team, they quickly hit their target of on-boarding 25 to 30 people each month. To achieve this, Walsingham commonly advertises in excess of 30 simultaneous vacancies. “That’s a lot of moving parts, but I know where we’re at” says Tony. He has two recruiters and one person dedicated to onboarding. “When I open CVMinder ATS, I can see exactly what’s going on at a glance.” Tony can see starters with offer status and employment check levels, the number of live advertisements, upcoming interviews and more. “CVMinder’s top down view gives me all the important information as soon as I sign in. Some additional management reports also help me to present our KPIs to the wider exec team.”

The care recruitment process

Many people can find it tedious to complete lengthy applications when applying for several jobs. The idea is to focus on the best applicants and encourage completion where required. “We automatically score and reject applicants who don’t meet the minimum threshold”, says Tony. “That allows us to concentrate on the best people.” At a glance, the team can see application completion levels and the scores for every application. “That saves a lot of time. We can also see why people have been automatically rejected, whether that’s because they are a non-driver, an overseas applicant or for other reasons.”

To further refine their recruiting approach, the charity added the CVMinder assessment module. “We use a range of situational judgement tests. We invite preferred applicants to take a test directly on CVMinder. The results help us to narrow down the pool of applicants to only those we want to interview. By using assessments, our interview to offer rate has substantially increased from 46% to 75%”. Assessments also support the charity’s values-based recruitment approach. “Gaining insights into a person’s strengths and weaknesses helps us to tune our interviews and we make better choices”, says Tony.

ATS automation is an ongoing objective. “We’re working with CVMinder on ideas for further automation and they are receptive which is very pleasing”, says Tony. “We don’t want to go too far though. We don’t want to lose the human touch. We must always keep in mind that recruiting is a people business.”

Summing up

Would Walsingham Support recommend CVMinder ATS? “Absolutely!” according to Tony. “It is flexible, simple to use and the support is great. My team enjoys using CVMinder ATS and feedback from our post-appointment surveys tell us that our applicants love it too!”

The charity is saving a lot of money by taking recruitment in house. “We are recruiting successfully and with full consideration for the high levels of regulatory compliance mandated in the care sector. CVMinder ATS has helped us to implement a rigorous, but accessible process.”

Tony sums things up. “As a manager,

• I can quickly see everything I need to see,
• CVMinder is happy to work together on future additions
• the ATS subscription fees are very lean compared to others and
• there is no long-term lock-in.

I am so very pleased that I selected CVMinder ATS as our Applicant Tracking System. I highly recommend it to any Care Provider or charity. In fact I would be happy to recommend it to any businesses bringing recruitment back in house.”

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