University of Wisconsin-Madison

Three standout metrics

30%

year-on-year increase in applications submitted

83%

application completion rate within first week

24%

returning visitors to career site

The voice of the customer

“We survey our applicants right after they’ve submitted their application, asking them to rate their experience on a one-to-five star scale. And overwhelmingly we get four- and five-star reviews.”

Christine Ray, Onboarding and New Employee Programs Consultant, University of Wisconsin-Madison

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What wasn’t working

The University of Wisconsin-Madison serves almost 50,000 students with 25,000 employees across 13 schools. With up to 4,000 job openings annually across both faculty and support staff, attracting high-quality applicants at scale is essential.

But during the pandemic application volumes dropped by 65% due to low unemployment, fierce competition for talent, and more candidates seeking flexible or remote working arrangements. Further, a decentraliseddecentralized hiring model meant each division handled its own recruitment, leading to problems with consistency and sharing talent pools.

The hiring teams faced multiple challenges:

The central HR team lacked tools to support decentraliseddecentralized teams build talent pipelines;
The career site didn’t engage jobseekers or convert interest into applications;
There was no way to showcase a unified employee value proposition across all 13 schools.

The turning point

The central HR team started by revamping Wisconsin-Madison’s overarching employee value proposition. Then came the search for the right talent tech.

The team needed a user-friendly career site they could manage without web development support. Heat mapping research revealed what jobseekers valued most: the ability to search and filter roles quickly. PageUp Recruitment Marketing emerged as the best fit for everyone’s needs.

The shift began in three phases:

Building an engaging career site

The team partnered with PageUp to build an on-brand, mobile-optimisedoptimized site with simple navigation, job search functionality, and custom CTAs to convert interest into applications.
Creating talent magnets

Creating bespoke landing pages for hard-to-fill roles helped target qualified candidates.
Re-engaging candidates automatically

Using customisedcustomized automated workflows allowed the team to re-engage lapsed candidates with incomplete application reminders, targeted job alerts, and candidate nurturing.

The solution in action

By creating a conversion-optimisedoptimized career site with PageUp Recruitment Marketing, pairing it with their existing PageUp ATS and unifying their EVP, Wisconsin-Madison transformed their recruitment approach and its effectiveness.

Key initiatives included:

Candidate-centric career site design

Taking direction from user heat mapping research, the site’s design highlights job search and filtering abilities – the functionality that emerged as jobseekers’ top priority.
Empowering candidates to self-schedule interviews

Allowing candidates to choose their own interview times improved their experience, leading to overwhelmingly positive feedback in applicant surveys.
Actionable insights

Accessing PageUp’s in-depth analytics and heat mapping helped the team understand what content resonated with jobseekers, allowing them to tweak and optimiseoptimize the candidate experience.
Seamless ATS integration

Two-way integration between PageUp Recruitment Marketing and PageUp ATS supported a better candidate experience and provided insights into the effectiveness of hiring processes.
Bespoke landing pages

Creating targeted pages for hard-to-fill roles helped the university attract specific talent pools and track the success of their recruitment campaigns.

The impact

Hard ROI

30% year-on-year increase in submitted applications
83% application completion rate achieved within first week of launch
24% returning visitor rate demonstrating strong engagement
5-star and 4-star ratings majority on applicant experience surveys

Soft ROI

Unified employer brand presentation across all 13 schools
Consistent hiring processes across 4,000 annual requisitions
Improved candidate experience through automated, timely communications
Greater support for decentraliseddecentralized HR teams in building talent pipelines

What surprisedsurprized us the most

“We have a very large campus with a lot of interesting, unique needs. We’ve always been able to work creatively with our technical account manager to push the system in different directions and make what we need to happen, happen.”

Christine Ray, Onboarding and New Employee Programs Consultant, University of Wisconsin-Madison