University of East Anglia

Approaching Recruitment Change

Human Resources Services leads all HR Operational activity at UEA and supports the University’s goal to develop a global employer brand that has integrity and will help the University attract, engage, recruit and retain the best academic and professional talent.

The Resourcing Team oversee the recruitment of internal and external staff across the University and work collaboratively with the Compliance Team to deliver an efficient and effective end-to-end recruitment process. This focuses on acquiring talent, employer brand, career development and diversity.

Candidate scarcity and a record number of vacancies in the UK have impacted the University’s ability to attract academic talent. To become competitive, UEA needed to revolutionise its approach to recruitment and streamline its end-to-end process, providing a simple candidate journey that enabled users to track and manage applications. UEA also wanted the ability to innovate processes, collect data to help inform future recruitment decisions and utilise untapped resources, including social media, webpages and careers fairs to promote UEA as an employer of choice.

Recruitment Challenges

Before selecting Eploy, the University of East Anglia utilised a HR recruitment module to facilitate recruitment, however, it was inefficient and hindered the process due to its limited functionality:

• The previous recruitment module only provided a storage facility for applications.
• Administrative burden:
  • Applications had to be manually uploaded for hiring managers to view, taking one hour daily from each Resourcing Adviser.
  • Inability to track the status of applications from a candidate or hiring manager’s perspective. This resulted in many candidates never receiving an outcome decision, which provided a poor candidate experience.
  • All communication, including approvals, shortlisting, interviewing, and offers, was conducted via email, which delayed the Time to Hire and added additional time for the Resourcing Team, who had to chase documentation continuously.
• Lengthy and cumbersome application forms led to a poor candidate experience and low applicant numbers. This was also disadvantageous for the university, affecting the quality of applications in a candidate-driven market.
• Inability to accurately capture meaningful data, such as Time to Hire and Advert & Campaign ROI and could not export report data. Retrieving any information from the system was incredibly time-consuming for the busy Resourcing Team.
• A lacklustre vacancies page made the recruitment process extremely challenging. There was no information for candidates to find other opportunities, learn about benefits, EDI or other supporting documentation. There was no self-service element for candidates to utilise.

When the previous recruitment technology was being made obsolete by the vendor, the Head of HR Operations, Samantha Swinton, considered how the process could be redesigned to provide an automated, efficient and streamlined process reducing Time to Hire, Cost per Hire, while improving both user and candidate experience, and capturing meaningful and easy-to-access real-time data.

A system review identified the need for a dedicated recruitment platform to replace the reliance on manual recruitment activities and to offer capabilities beyond merely posting job adverts on a webpage with a manual process behind the scenes. The team developed a scoping document to find a vendor who could meet essential and desirable technical requirements and help UEA solve their recruitment challenges.

The objectives of this project included:

• Reducing and automating administrative tasks
• Eliminating duplication
• Delivering a built-in approval process
• Self-service functionality for candidates
• An attractive careers site/vacancies page
• Positive experience for all core users, candidates and hiring managers
• Access to real-time data

The Implementation Process

After a thorough procurement process, UEA selected Eploy because of its ability to deliver all the required features and functionality and its flexibility in platform configuration, making it a future-proof ATS solution.

The implementation phase focussed on shaping the recruitment process to reflect requirements across candidate engagement and registration, building recruitment workflows to guide candidates and hiring managers throughout the process from application to onboarding while capturing core recruitment data.

The Eploy team collaborated with the Resourcing and Compliance Teams to explore different approaches to enable the platform to work in the required way. This included developing multiple vacancy authorisation workflows, some of which were complex, creating multiple application forms and tailoring these and the onboarding process to meet role requirements, and setting up various email templates to engage with candidates at different stages of the process.

The Compliance Team manage the onboarding process, providing induction details once pre-employment checks are satisfactorily completed. This is a two-stage customised onboarding process. The first stage is contract signing and gathering all onboarding information via Eploy. Video content is incorporated to provide an overview of how to complete the relevant forms tailored to the role. Once all pre-employment checks have been satisfactorily completed, the second stage is to issue a welcome letter with a welcome video, induction details and a survey to rate the recruitment process.

Once onboarding is complete, candidate data is exported to relevant teams, reducing manual administration.

Rules & Achievements

Eploy’s fully automated recruitment platform has reduced administration for staff across UEA and improved the candidate experience, enhancing the number and quality of applications. Within the first two weeks of launching Eploy and the university’s new careers site, 2,061 people registered with UEA, and 1,466 applications had been submitted.

“Our new vacancies page is device responsive, as is the recruitment platform, and provides candidates with the ability to search for roles, enables them to register for job alerts and access their own Candidate Portal to keep track of their application status. Additional information, if relevant to the role, is also available alongside vacancies and is downloadable, as is detailed guidance for applicants on how to apply”. Samantha Swinton, Head of HR Operation at UEA.

Other results and achievements include:

• UEA can make data-driven decisions with Eploy’s recruitment metrics and dashboards showcasing valuable insights.
• New attractive careers site provides great candidate experience and streamlines the application process. Attending careers fairs and utilising the new careers site helped UEA see a 109% increase in applications.
• The average number of candidates per role increased from 13.5 to 39, with an average of 11 additional candidates appointed per month.
• Time to Hire is now 43 days, a 15% reduction, saving 8 days.
• Eploy captures EDI data and provides real-time inclusiveness and accessibility reporting dashboards.
• Check My Job tool within Eploy identifies potential bias in job descriptions. Using the tool and inclusive imagery has impacted positively, with an overall increase in applications from all Ethnic Minority groups.
• Guidance for candidates on preparing for their interview and a conscious effort to incorporate EDI into all materials, has shown an average monthly increase of 68 applications from candidates with disabilities. The percentage of candidates with a declared disability being offered a role has also increased by 5%.

UEA are also able to utilise Eploy to create surveys for candidates to rate the process. Feedback from candidates has been incredibly positive, including candidates who were unsuccessful in being offered a role but still had a positive candidate experience.

Ratings are currently:

1. 4.4 / 5 for the hiring process
2. 4.7 / 5 for the interview process
3. 4.5 / 5 for communication

Key stakeholders involved in the project have been delighted by the transformative change.

The Associate Director of Human Resources Services, Linda Cole, commented: “Eploy has revolutionised the way we work and the service we provide. It improves collaboration between the Resourcing Team and hiring managers, strengthens relationships, and increases the capability and productivity of the team. But it’s also provided a professional edge to our Employer Brand, allowing us to extend our candidate reach and deliver a dynamic approach to our emerging global recruitment strategy”.