Kansas State University (“K-State”) is an award-winning higher education institution and the first operational land-grant university in the United States. With a mission to foster excellent teaching, research, and service, it operates three main campuses, serves over 20,000 students, and engages approximately 5,000 employees.
The challenge
Part of K-State’s bold, strategic plan to become a next-generation land-grant university focuses on one essential pillar: building their workforce. The talent acquisition (TA) team recognisedrecognized the value of actively engaging candidates from the get-go with information to guide their decision-making process. But their basic careerscareer site and job board presented major challenges.
Their careerscareer site had a single landing page that spoke briefly to employee benefits and featured open roles, but was missing imagery or a compelling story that would inspire people to apply. The job search page listed jobs which lacked titles and had long descriptions, as well as a long list of filters making it difficult for jobseekers to navigate across devices. The application process was too long, deterring candidates. There was no way to capture passive talent, or follow up with candidates who had incomplete applications. Without a strong candidate experience, K-State’s TA team knew they were missing out on talent.
To make matters more complex, they only had visibility over two data points—complete vs. incomplete application numbers. Missing critical recruitment data made it difficult for TA to mobilisemobilize their talent strategy and make ongoing improvements.
The focus
Operating in a “team of two”, K-State Talent Acquisition Manager, Shannon Leftwich and her TA officer knew they could address these challenges with an innovative recruitment marketing solution.
They sought an engaging, user-friendly, and mobile-optimisedoptimized careerscareer site with functionality to capture active and passive candidates, stay ahead of competitors, and strengthen their talent pipeline. The solution needed self-service capabilities to keep their careerscareer site content fresh and provide candidates with important, compelling information, such as:
- EVP (Employee Value Proposition) messaging
- employee quotes
- organisationalorganizational values
- employee benefits
- campus locations.
Additionally, they needed a revamped, easy-to-navigate job board to showcase roles and departments – a particularly important feature for recruiting hard-to-fill and regularly-recruited jobs. Automation capabilities would facilitate TA’s ability to connect with talent more readily and boost application rates, using minimal resourcing.
To support their ideal system and inform their talent strategy, TA needed data-driven insights to help them determine the best place to focus their time, effort, and budget.
The solution
K-State has successfully been using PageUp Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and Onboarding solutions for sometime. When they discovered the PageUp Recruitment Marketing solution, they soon realisedrealized it was the missing piece of their tech stack to help resolve their pain points and enhance top of funnel recruitment, talent attraction and engagement.
To kick off the project, Shannon and her TA officer partnered with K-State’s marketing team to ensure branding, messaging, and imagery were aligned throughout the change management process. With support from their PageUp project manager, they implemented a brand new, mobile-optimisedoptimized and user-friendly careerscareer site. It features strong EVP messaging, images, employee quotes, and easy-to-use job search. They were able to create dedicated landing pages with important information, such as K-State’s vision, strategic plan, recruitment FAQs, “talent tips”, “communities” (campuses), and more with ease.
“We knew this additional content would be valuable for candidates, but we were blown away by how much traffic these pages receive, particularly the ‘Our Communities’ page. It reinforced for us how much they need this information in their decision making. We’re very proud of this page, and our site. The PageUp system gives us more flexibility than we’ve ever had before.”
– Shannon Leftwich, Talent Acquisition Manager, Kansas State University
By combining PageUp Recruitment Marketing and ATS, they have transformed the job search experience. Prospective candidates now benefit from simplified filters and an intuitive browsing experience. Enhanced functionality allows job ads to include personalisedpersonalized recommendations for other roles, tailored to candidates’ browsing history. Additionally, the TA team has streamlined the application process, reducing drop-offs, increasing efficiency, and attracting higher-quality applications.
There are multiple CTAs for active and passive candidates to engage with K-State – such as “contact a recruiter”, express interest in a role, submit a resume, sign up for job alerts, and join the university’s talent network.
TA has established automated nurture sequences—for instance, encouraging candidates to submit incomplete applications—to engage candidates without manual effort. Within 10 weeks of launching the site, K-State has seen incredible conversion rates from this initiative:
- 52% of jobseekers who expressed interest in a role (without starting the application process) returned from the nurture sequence to complete an application, resulting in a 13% hire rate.
- 41% of candidates with incomplete applications returned from the nurture sequence to complete an application, resulting in a 10% hire rate.
Analytics demonstrate top-visited pages and career-related pages that have the biggest impact on application rates. TA is encouraged to see analytics around visitors’ time on site and return visits moving in a positive direction. Insights into sourcing channel effectiveness ensure they’re using their job ad spend wisely.
“Like many TA teams, we have a limited budget. So it’s incredibly impactful to know the sources where we achieve the best return for our ad dollars.
We’re taking full advantage of all PageUp tools to make really good decisions. We’re excited about the data we have access to, and our improved ability to communicate with candidates. We love that it’s totally customisablecustomizable and flexible. Implementation was seamless, and we felt supported every step of the way.”
By leveraging PageUp solutions, K-State has refined communications from attraction and engagement to hiring and onboarding by introducing new templates and automation that ensures consistent messaging aligned with their brand.
Looking ahead, the TA team is motivated to continue collecting candidate feedback, using data-driven insights, and optimisingoptimizing processes to secure top talent and deliver a best-in-class candidate experience.
Fresh insights for HR
Stay up to date with HR trends, tips and more when you sign up for our industry newsletter
