The challenge
The College of Western Idaho (CWI) has established itself as a top higher education provider in the Treasure Valley. Since opening its doors in 2007, CWI provides accessible and affordable education to over 30,000 students each year. The institution is highly committed to its student success —and in order to deliver outstanding student experiences, CWI needs to employ quality staff.
Like most organisationsorganizations, CWI has faced many challenges associated with the post-pandemic recruitment landscape. The Idaho talent market is highly competitive, with record-low unemployment rates and a job listings outnumbering jobseekesr 2:1. A lack of suitable candidates, an outdated career site, and a stagnant recruitment strategy led to CWI struggling to find the right talent. Sara Avila from CWI’s Human Resources team explains just how much the pandemic impacted their hiring pools:
About 2-3 years ago it was very common to receive over 50 applications for Admin Assistant roles. In the last year, that has dropped to an average of 15-18 applicants. Pre-pandemic, our practice was to post positions for 2 weeks. In the last year, we’ve found the need to extend closing dates by 30-45 days.
—Sara Avila, CWI
CWI operates under a decentraliseddecentralized hiring model where each school handles applicant screening. The hiring teams found that many candidates were juggling multiple offers, and often taking the role they were offered first. A lack of central visibility and access to crucial data insights were costing the college precious time in the recruitment process —and meant CWI was losing its top candidates.
The focus
To compete in a red-hot market, the team at CWI knew they needed to pivot their approach. It started with re-evaluating the entire recruitment process to identify the key focus areas. As a priority, the team at CWI needed a way to reduce time-to-hire. They also needed a way to clearly identify what areas were working, and what needed attention —with provable data to back it up.
While the College’s decentraliseddecentralized model lacked centralisedcentralized visibility, it meant that hiring managers and local recruitment teams were able to build strong relationships with candidates individially. What the hiring teams needed was support to reduce administrative burden, access to better data, and insights to help screen candidates more efficiently.
The team needed a solution to solve these key problems: to streamline their hiring process end-to-end, give hiring managers the support they need, and provide the analytics required to fine-tune the overarching strategy to make informed decisions moving forward.
The solution
Sara and the Core HR Team to partnered with PageUp for an ATS and Onboarding solution. Post-implementation, the team had access to in-depth analytics to help pinpoint areas of success and highlight opportunities for growth. Using these metrics, the team was able to compare their current approach against industry benchmarks and identify vulnerable areas of their recruitment strategy.
Prior to PageUp we didn’t have the right system in place to gather metrics. We recently started to leverage the enhanced reporting feature to assist with gathering the necessary metrics to assist with recruitment strategy.
—Sara Avila, CWI
Using the ATS, the team was able to fast-track their hiring process, streamline hiring manager workloads and provide applicants with a great experience. With Onboarding, the team was also able to ensure that once they secured a new hire, the seamless experience set new starters up for success.
Using PageUp, CWI was able to:
- Lower time-to-hire with streamlined, mobile-friendly application processes
- Deliver a great end-to-end candidate experience
- Evaluate the effectiveness of sourcing channels to drive ROI
- Build a seamless onboarding process to help engage and retain new hires
- Make data-informed decisions about future HR strategies
With PageUp ATS and Onboarding, CWI can move forward with their future talent projects with confidence. What’s more, they’ve been able to create a seamless end-to-end experience for candidates from application, offer, onboarding and beyond.
Want to learn more about how PageUp can help you streamline your hiring process? Get in touch today.
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