Problem

A Montreal-based recruitment firm was experiencing a productivity problem related to the management of new candidate registrations it was receiving on a daily basis.
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The firm offers permanent and temporary employee recruitment services to companies to meet their workforce needs.
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The team therefore had to manage both the information and registrations of the many candidates it received each day (generally between 30 and 40), and the information of companies wishing to hire them.
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Prior to this project, registrations were made by candidates by filling in paper forms, and this information had to be entered manually by an employee into their ATS (application for recruitment) system.
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The data entry task typically took 25 to 30 hours of an assistant's time, and also caused logistical problems.

Regularly, surplus registrations were not processed quickly enough, and candidates could not be placed with an employer because they did not appear in the ATS system.

Project objectives

The goal of this recruitment firm's management was to reduce the time lost due to the large number of applications to be processed, and to improve the candidate experience.‍

• Increase productivity : reduce data entry time in the ATS system.
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• Reduced file processing time: be able to access candidate information quickly from the ATS to enable placement with an employer.
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• Better candidate experience: offering a better experience than filling in a paper form.

Strategy

We began our mandate by mapping the candidate registration process through to data entry into the ATS system for use by recruiters.
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Followed by the implementation of an electronic form with signature for candidate registration to replace the paper document.
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We created an automated system to generate a signed PDF document upon submission of a completed document, and upload it to the company's SharePoint.
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The aim was to retain proof, as the ATS did not allow documents to be added as attachments.
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This software did not allow direct data integration, but CSV file import was possible.

Automation compiles all registrations made during the day into an Excel file, which is automatically sent to the person in charge.
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This person must import the file versus filling in all the data for each candidate.

Results

As a result of this project, this recruitment firm's team benefits from the use of technology and automation.

• Productivity gains: the time required to enter candidates into the ATS has now dropped from 25 to 30 hours per week to less than one hour per week.
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• Reduced errors and processing time for a candidate file.
  
  Documents can now be accessed by recruiters in real time directly from SharePoint and on the same day in their ATS system.

• Improved candidate experience: candidates can now register directly from their phone or a company-supplied tablet.

The automation of this important task enabled this company to achieve a return on investment in less than 3 weeks, while reducing potential errors and improving the user experience for its candidates.

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