November 2003 Newsletter
PageUp e-news - November 2003
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Welcome to the bigger and better PageUp. For the past few months we have been busily growing, moving and redesigning not to mention working, working, working, to bring you an even better range of products. With 10 new staff members, new centrally located offices and a brand new look, PageUp is ready to take on the world.
Contents
- 1. Coles Myer Limited - The figures speak for themselves
- 2. Great careers sites
- 3. PageUp welcomes new team members
- 4. Upcoming Event
- 5. Recipe of the week
Coles Myer Limited - The figures speak for themselves
PageUp recently hosted the first of a series of breakfast seminars focusing on the change management issues involved with moving from traditional to online recruitment. 'e-recruit - changing the way CML manages recruitment' presented by Jospephine Thompson, Recruitment Strategy Manager, CML, gave a fascinating insight to the way Australia's largest employer handled its recruitment challenges
Not many organisations face a task as daunting as Coles Myer when it comes to recruitment. As Australia's largest employer, CML has 15 brands and 165,000 staff in more than 2000 stores around Australia and New Zealand. Annually employing 60,000 new recruits requires a lot of resources. Some of the recruitment challenges faced were:
- Manually receiving in excess of 2000 unsolicited applications a week
- Over 3000 available positions weekly
- 35 full time data entry staff to input candidate information
- 84 full time recruitment consultants cataloguing and responding to applications
- Over 120 recruitment agency suppliers
- Over $300,000 on postage & handling alone
The decision to revamp their recruitment system was obvious and CML chose PageUp to supply PageUp People, a custom-tailored recruitment management system. Thompson said 'From concept to implementation took eight weeks, it has been a pivotal change to the way we recruit.' One of the challenges facing CML was its wide geographic distribution. The new system centralised the recruitment process of all the brands and PageUp had trained all 84 users around Australia within 7 days. Fundamental to the success of the project was12 weeks of significant planning prior to implementation. This crucial element mapped the 'old' recruitment process to the 'desired' recruitment process and involved understanding who the key stakeholders were and getting them on board. Some of the main objectives of moving to PageUp People were to:
Remove the data entry component;
Improve visibility to all career opportunities across all the CML brands
Significantly reduce the postage;
Create a talent warehouse to draw on for significant reduction in hire time;
Centralise the data for comprehensive reporting and analysis
Automate parts of the process to allow for deployment of the current labour to more value-added tasks such as, increasing quality & retention and executing the vision to centralise the recruitment process.
To source candidates CML continues to use various methods of job advertising in-house ads, traditional print media and job boards such as Seek, directing candidates to go to the CML website and apply online. Candidates can search the jobs database by function, location or brand and apply online. Due to the unique position of having an existing relationship with its applicants, in that applicants are also customers Coles Myer wanted to ensure that each applicant had great quality of experience. In the past, sheer volume had made it almost impossible to respond to each person but with PageUp People's built in automated SMS or emails, it is simple. PageUp People's flexible system also allowed CML to outsource their 10,000 positions for the Christmas casuals drive by giving access logins to an external agency yet still maintaining ownership of the candidate database.
Results
Within the first week of going live over 18,000 applications were received and in just 3 months CML has now received over 120,000. Substantial cost savings in contacting potential employees, time to recruit and a better calibre of candidates are just some of the outstanding results already seen since implementation. This is due to the automation of many administrative procedures - sifting through piles of paper resumes, reducing data entry, not to mention just the savings involved with automated SMS text messages and emails instead of phone-calls or postage. With more accurate data about its candidates, Coles Myer now has a huge talent warehouse of potential staff, filtered and grouped to their requirements to call upon for future employment opportunities. This allows for faster and better placement and will lead to better reporting and future candidate management and in the end, improved organisational success.
Great careers sites
Having a great careers site versus an average one can be the difference between finding that perfect candidate or losing them to your competitor. Here is a list of key elements that are a must for a great careers site.
'One click rule': Make sure that your careers section is highly visible on the home page. Careers, Career opportunities, Employment or Jobs are commonly used for the link title.
Write good job descriptions and make it easy for candidates to find the current vacancies and apply for a job. If you don?t have any vacancies, encourage candidates to register their interest for any that arise in the future.
Give good quality information on what it is like to work for your organization and target the candidates you want - Include information on corporate culture and the working environment, staff benefits, career development opportunities, FAQs and the recruitment procedure.
Include a separate section for graduates as they have different needs. Show them which jobs match their degrees and likely careers paths they may follow. You could even offer resume and interview tips.
Studies show that about 1/3 of hires should come internally. Make sure your current employees know that they are valuable and advertise internal positions on your careers site. It shows potential candidates that there is career development potential within your organisation.
Encourage employees to 'refer a friend': it can be assumed that they will already have a cultural fit so let them know they will be treated differently. Follow up on these referrals.
Make sure your corporate website comes up in the first 3 pages (preferably the first) when looked for on a search engine and track the statistics in order to make it more visible to your target audience
Include the contact details your human resources officer.
PageUp welcomes new team members
Due to the success of its PageUp People product, PageUp recently appointed 11 new members to its hard working team. We welcome on board new customer relationship managers Amber Creswell, Sean Tewman, Deborah Mason and Carly Eriksen, all from experienced positions in the Recruitment and Technology industries. Melanie Saunders in Sydney as business development manager, Fiona Moreton as HR Consultant, Nicola Billens as its national marketing manager, Tung Nguyen as Project Manager, Susan Harris as accounts and administration manager, Brad Barnett as systems engineer and Marty Scavone as software developer.
Upcoming event
Elizabeth O'Leary, Head of Recruitment & Careers, Macquarie Bank, will present 'The shift to online recruitment - winning hearts and minds' on December 8th in Sydney.
To register your interest click here.
Recipe of the week & those fabulous photos!
A recent edition to the PageUp website is the recipe of the week section. We encourage you to try it and share your own great recipes with others. For this weeks recipe click here.
PageUp has also received a lot of feedback about our homepage daily photos. Each week starting soon, we will feature photos taken by our clients. If you have some high quality photos that you think would look great on the PageUp website, scan them and send them through with a slogan that represents PageUp's core ideology.
Passionate innovation
Positive attitude
Quality in all that we do
Respect & encouragement
Honesty, integrity & ethics
Photos should be scanned at 200%, 72dpi and sent to nicolab@pageup.com.au.
Contact Us
For more details on how to reach us, click here.
Media Contact
Karen Cariss
(03) 9602 3300
13 Somerset Place, Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia