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Pageup Kingston City Story

City of Kingston

 

“We’ve had teams that have been heavy recruiters for years and years, and from day one have gone ‘This is amazing. This is so much easier. We have much more visibility. It’s way more intuitive.’”

 

The City of Kingston is a local government area located south-east of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It employs approximately 1,600 people in diverse roles and specialisations and focuses on delivering exceptional services and benefits to the community. 

 

The challenge

The small but dedicated HR team at the City of Kingston operates within a decentralised recruitment model. Hiring managers are responsible for shortlisting, interviewing, and conducting reference checks. The HR team supports the business to curate advertisements, manage pre onboarding checks, the offer stage and onboarding.

The team faced a pressing issue: their Applicant Tracking System (ATS) provider discontinued its product, requiring a migration to a new solution. This transition highlighted several challenges they had been grappling with:

  • Limited flexibility: The ATS was rigid and required manual intervention to progress through each step with blockages in the process as it lacked agility in its approach. Tasks had to be completed sequentially, even when unnecessary, such as sending paperwork that wasn’t always needed.
  • Dependence on the provider: Any internal changes to the system’s configuration required the provider’s involvement, incurring additional costs and lengthy delays.
  • Lack of updates: The provider had ceased investing in the product, leading to outdated functionality and no enhancements with little support when issues did arise.
  • No analytics: The system lacked sufficient reporting capabilities, leaving the team without data and insights to inform decisions.

Beyond the ATS, the HR team needed functionality to keep new starters engaged, induct new employees and provide them access to online learning from day one. These gaps hindered their efforts to streamline onboarding, enhance employee learning, and ensure compliance.

 

The focus

The City of Kingston sought a modern ATS that would go beyond the capabilities of their previous provider and elevate their HR operations. Their priorities included:

  • Enhanced HR capabilities: They aimed to improve processes related to employee inductions and day one learning.
  • Seamless integrations: The new system needed to integrate with their existing payroll and HRIS systems to automate workflows and increase efficiency.
  • User-friendly system: Hiring managers required an intuitive system with the flexibility to tailor workflows to their business needs.
  • Actionable insights: They wanted robust analytics to provide visibility across the hiring process, share insights with stakeholders, and generate detailed reports to find trends, identify bottle necks and inform process improvements.

By addressing these focus areas, City of Kingston aimed to streamline recruitment, support employee development, and drive greater operational efficiencies.

 

The solution

After evaluating various options, City of Kingston selected PageUp ATS, Onboarding, and Learning solutions, identifying it as the best fit to meet their priorities.

“We went through a really competitive process. We landed on PageUp for a whole bunch of reasons, and really loved that PageUp is an Australian founded company.”

Sarah Varley, P&C Systems – Project Coordinator at City of Kingston

 

Throughout the implementation process, the system was configured to meet the needs of their People and Culture teams, internal business users and candidates. Receiving greater flexibility to align with their workflow ensured they got the most out of the platform.

“PageUp came with a defined plan, but also flexibility. We had really great project leads and phenomenal implementation support who were experienced in working with other local councils, which was very helpful for us.”

 

The ease of use and new found control has allowed HR to take on feedback and implement changes that better support their users.

“The thing we really love about PageUp is we’re all skilled as superusers. So anytime we get feedback about improvements that could be made in the system, we can make them on the spot. This has really changed the narrative internally for our team and our users trust in the product we deliver.”

 

The enhanced workflow flexibility and seamless integration with Kingston’s HR systems have significantly saved time and boosted productivity across functions.

“Previously, it was just HR and the hiring managers who had access; now we have payroll and health and safety too. This has streamlined our workflow with less manual effort and a lot more automation.”

 

The improvements have received great feedback from existing employees, achieving high adoption rates. Within the first five months of implementation, over 200 new employees were hired.

“We’ve had teams that have been heavy recruiters for years and years, and from day one have gone ‘This is amazing. This is so much easier. We have much more visibility. It’s way more intuitive.’”

 

1,200 staff are now using the Learning solution for compliance training. With many staff working away from desks, the training is accessible on any device. Employees also have access to sufficient learning modules to support their development down the track.

“For us, having the onboarding solution meant that on day one our new starters got access to learning and compliance activities. That means employees can get out to the field work within their first couple of days, rather than waiting a week.”

 

The team now has visibility over the data and insights they need across the entire recruitment workflow and inform their talent acquisition strategy.

“The dashboards and reporting have been really helpful, and we can see where the gaps are. We’ve also been able to use analytics to see where we are getting stuck in the process and see if further training is needed or if system configurations need to be tweaked which we can do right away.”

 

City of Kingston users have praised the support received and prompt resolution of any roadblocks, while they continually learn about the system.

“The support team, knowledge portal, and live support have been invaluable. Lodging tickets is simple, and live support even educates users on fixes to empower them to resolve similar issues independently moving forward.”

 

With PageUp, City of Kingston has not only resolved their previous challenges but also set a strong foundation for future growth and innovation in People and Culture operations. This transformation underscores how the right technology can drive efficiency and elevate the employee experience. 

Pageup Story House Early Learning Case Study

Story House Early Learning

A leader in the early childhood sector, Story House Early Learning (SHEL) delivers quality services across NSW, VIC, and QLD. With a focus on showcasing their authentic culture and speaking directly to the talent demographics best suited to open roles, SHEL’s TA function has developed a real strength in recruiting and retaining a committed, diverse workforce.

 

The challenge

Operating in an extremely competitive sector, SHEL needed to stand out as an employer of choice to recruit educators, casual employees, leadership and operational staff across locations. The shortage of early childhood educators, in particular, has been an ongoing challenge for many organisationsorganizations throughout the industry, including SHEL. 

As a values-driven organisationorganization, their recruitment team looked to amplify a strong, authentic Employee Value Proposition (EVP) and employer brand across channels—including their careerscareer site—to attract top talent, aligned with their culture and values.

The biggest roadblock? Their careerscareer site was managed by an external company. This severely limited their ability to make timely updates, keep content up to date, and respond quickly to changing recruitment needs. It also lacked analytics for them to optimiseoptimize content, refine the application process, and maintain a high-quality candidate experience.

Other sourcing channels, such as social media, were underutilisedunderutilized to target diverse candidates – including Gen Z, one of SHEL’s primary talent demographics.

 

The focus

Operating a lean recruitment team, Talent Acquisition Manager Kelly Murphy recognisedrecognized the value of implementing best practice recruitment marketing and analytics to enhance their hiring efforts.

Gaining control over their careerscareer site would enable SHEL’s recruitment team to truly reflect their powerful EVP, employer brand, mission, values, and unique culture to attract top talent. Knowing candidates seek a wealth of information before applying for a role, their goal was to feature a variety of engaging content to aid their decision making – with inclusive design, functionality, and accessibility features to accommodate a diverse range of candidates.

They also looked to revamp their job ads, as well as the questions and mandatory fields required during the application process to ask better interview questions and strengthen connections with candidates during screening.

Real-time analytics would underpin their strategy, allowing them to optimiseoptimize various pages and content, build a robust recruitment marketing content plan, and gain a comprehensive understanding of the candidate journey. They sought strategic insights to identify areas to save costs, and where additional investment was needed to ensure resources were utilisedutilized effectively.

 

The solution

Kelly and her recruitment team turned to PageUp’s Recruitment Marketing solution to transform their careerscareer site in strategic alignment with their EVP and employer brand. Their new, mobile-optimisedoptimized site enables prospective talent to easily navigate, find key information, and take action.

“We chose PageUp Recruitment Marketing so that we would know where people are coming from and what people are engaging in. It also allows us to make really quick updates and changes as needed.”

Kelly Murphy, Talent Acquisition Manager, SHEL

 

They also implemented a range of unique calls to action (CTAs) across their site to further engage and capture visitors, including a unique “secret page” to showcase SHEL’s fun, celebratory culture through videos, photos, social posts, testimonials, employee stories, and more.

 

Pageup House Early Learning Career Site

 

“Our secret page creates a unique, memorable experience for candidates and fosters deeper engagement with our brand.

Analytics have shown we’ve already achieved a number of successful hires from candidates who were going to exit the site, but found this page and applied.”

 

SHEL appointed a dedicated Recruitment Marketing Officer to strategically plan and publish content for the site, and tailor posts for key sourcing channels, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok. Most notably, SHEL was one of the first early childhood education providers in Australia to adopt TikTok to share recruitment marketing content—some of which has gone viral! This has been a major drawcard for Gen Z talent. This segmented approach balances how different generations and talent demographics consume and engage content, targeting them on their most active channels more effectively and driving them back to their careerscareer site.

The team updated the application process to showcase values and culture from the get-go, reduced mandatory fields, and asked personalisedpersonalized questions to engage candidates throughout the recruitment process.

“Transitioning to PageUp Recruitment Marketing has been a game-changer. We’ve seen the immediate positive impact of our careerscareer site and strategic sourcing initiatives. We’ve been able to use analytics to identify top-performing pages, develop an effective content strategy, and optimiseoptimize resource allocation. Our interview process is far more personalisedpersonalized. So far, candidate feedback has been exceptionally positive.”

 

SHEL’s proactive recruitment strategy and key sourcing channels are setting the new standard in digital recruitment. SHEL are now seeing their careerscareer site deliver a sourcing channel effectiveness of 6.5 compared to the industry average of 30 (this shows the number of applications from a particular sourcing channel required to secure 1 hire). By partnering with PageUp, the recruitment team is operating with greater efficiency, delivering meaningful, engaging experiences for candidates, and driving faster talent acquisition.

“Everything is about speed in recruitment and the talent market is constantly evolving. Having full control with PageUp Recruitment Marketing means we can move faster. Our new capabilities enable us to monitor performance and make data-driven optimisationsoptimizations to win top talent more quickly, and stay ahead of the competition in an incredibly competitive sector.”

Pageup Camp Australia Case Study Featured Image

Camp Australia

 

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Camp Australia is a leading national provider of out of school hours care (OSHC) and vacation care. They operate nearly 550 services across the country with approximately 3,500 employees, primarily educators.

 

The challenge

Operating within an industry with a volatile labour market, and a largely casualised workforce, Camp Australia is not immune to high levels of turnover. They constantly recruit educators, depending on high-volume recruitment, to anticipate and meet the needs of their services and deliver an engaging, safe, and compliant OSHC experience.

While providing OSHC services might seem straightforward, Camp Australia must navigate a complex and highly regulated industrial landscape with inconsistencies in approach across the country. Compliance with these regulations can prove challenging, and the need to source, attract, and retain qualified educators is critical. However, this issue is compounded by educators facing high barriers of entry into the industry and constant assessment to demonstrate they are meeting stringent industry standards and maintaining their qualifications and skills.

“There are various federal and state regulations around qualifications, certifications, and educator-to-child ratios. There’s no uniformity across the country. It’s all very different state by state.”

Craig Stewart, Head of People at Camp Australia

 

Camp Australia relied on multiple proprietary platforms that didn’t integrate with key systems. This fragmentation led to manual, inefficient processes and workflows, which resulted in time and cost wastage and a greater risk of errors or invalid information being captured and used.

“There were a lot of bits and pieces that we had to string together to get the ultimate outcome. When dealing with thousands of educators hired each year, that pretty quickly compounds into a massive amount of time, energy and effort that could be far more efficient.”

 

Their systems lacked essential reporting capabilities, making it difficult to extract valuable insights to inform business decisions or provide real-time visibility on recruitment progress. This deficiency hindered their ability to manage and balance workflows effectively.

“It’s all about transparency and visibility that we just didn’t have.”

 

The focus

Camp Australia was seeking a far more sophisticated talent acquisition system to better manage volume hiring demands and enhance recruitment processes. By moving to a specialisedspecialized system, they aimed to

  • Improve the user experience throughout the recruitment journey and into onboarding
  • OptimiseOptimize their processes and workflow efficiency,
  • Gain greater visibility and reporting capability.

“The biggest thing was process efficiency. Being able to map out our process so that the people who needed to interact could do so seamlessly in one place. We needed transparency and visibility across the various stakeholder groups and be able to report easily.”

 

They sought an adaptable, configurable system to meet the diverse hiring needs across their different functions. The solution would enable the creation of customisedcustomized hiring and onboarding workflows to deliver a personalisedpersonalized and superior candidate and onboarding experience relevant to each individual.

Camp Australia wanted a user-friendly solution that would empower their talent acquisition team to take full control of their careerscareer site to enhance candidate engagement, encourage more applications, and effectively promote their employer value proposition (EVP).

“A big part of it for us was the control that the TA function had. We needed the ability to change something without needing to go to IT and wait for weeks for that to happen.”

 

The solution

 By implementing PageUp Recruitment Marketing, ATS and Onboarding solutions, Camp Australia was able to recraft their recruitment and onboarding processes to achieve more efficient ways of working.

“We’ve almost halved our time to fill across roles, largely by the process efficiencies we’ve had through implementing PageUp and how we’ve been able to change our approach.”

 

With access to essential reporting and analytics Camp Australia can clearly see how they’re progressing, and use this information to optimiseoptimize processes and inform business decisions.

“To report back and see where we were having our pain points, to interrogate ‘why?’ with data, and make changes has been a game changer. It’s so easy to create reports or view the dashboard to see those changes in action.”

 

After implementing the PageUp solutions, the talent acquisition team immediately felt the benefits, regaining control and resolving long-standing issues.

“The talent acquisition team were super excited because they could see their pain points being solved. They can get a sense of empowerment because they can directly change things themselves. If they see something that’s not working, they can fix it.”

 

Pageup Camp Australia Career Site

Camp Australia CareersCareer Site

They no longer require IT to get things done and have been able to take control of their careerscareer site, keeping the content fresh and engaging to attract talent.

“Being able to change things, both visually and content wise, has been incredibly freeing for the team. Equally from an efficiency perspective, we can just do it, and know it gets done, so that’s great.”

 

The time savings experienced has extended beyond Camp Australia’s talent acquisition team. By integrating with their payroll system, they have streamlined new hire paperwork, eliminating a tedious manual process. This efficiency has freed up an entire headcount in payroll to focus on more valuable work.

“The time processing of a new starter has been phenomenal. What used to take half a day, now takes about 5 minutes.”

 

Key results

 

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Camp Australia’s onboarding time to get new employees ‘ready to roster’ and provide care to kids, has been streamlined from 3 months down to 2 weeks. The Onboarding solution has provided insight to how new starters are progressing through the process, what tasks need to be completed and if there are any issues.

“Because of how the onboarding process has brought it all together, most people are through that process, from offer acceptance to their first shift within two weeks, which is a phenomenally good improvement. We can support people through the process faster and fill the gap in a much more timely fashion.”

 

Since implementation, Camp Australia has been able to rely on PageUp support when needed and have built a great relationship with their Customer Success Manager (CSM).

“We haven’t had to use online support that much, but when we have, they’ve been super responsive. Our CSM has been great at sharing information and new features, and making sure we understand it.”

 

By partnering with PageUp, Camp Australia overcame fragmented systems and manual processes. Their talent acquisition team now operates with greater efficiency, transparency, and control, driving faster recruitment and onboarding times and freeing up resources for more strategic work.

Nsw Fire Rescue Image

Fire and Rescue NSW

The challenge


Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW) is one of the world’s largest urban fire and rescue services, serving the Australian community with courage and care, without judgement. 

Its diverse, highly-skilled workforce is comprisedcomprized of a wide variety of roles, including: permanent and on-call frontline firefighters, corporate and administrative roles, trade-based roles, and non-station-based operational roles. Each have unique, highly-specific recruitment requirements and challenges. 

In order to cater for both centralisedcentralized and decentraliseddecentralized recruitment processes, its Talent Acquisition (TA) team needed to collaborate with field-based administrative teams and hiring managers to meet those needs. 

At the heart of this challenge was managing their large, annual recruitment campaign for permanent firefighters, which typically attracts upwards of 5,000 applications. No small feat for a lean recruitment team. 

TA needed to manage thousands of applications, qualify candidates through a vast number of pre-screening steps —approximately 68, to boot!— and ensure compliance with safety and training requirements. 

 

The focus  


For its annual firefighter recruitment campaign, the TA team needed to progress candidates through a vast number of important pre-screening steps, including: psychometric, behavioural, physical, and medical testing, as well as online video and panel interviewing, group activities, questionnaires, and training. 

A flexible, scalable solution with integration capabilities would enable them to streamline these processes by:

  • improving internal collaboration
  • reducing manual, paper-based processing 
  • effectively managing a high volume of applications and reducing ineligible applications through established criteria
  • progressing and facilitating efficient communication with candidates. 

“There aren’t many organisationsorganizations that have such a complex, in-depth recruitment process. We chose PageUp as our ATS, primarily because it would enable us to efficiently handle bulk recruitment, from application to onboarding.” 

–Sally Langley, Principal Project Manager – IT Directorate, FRNSW 

 

The solution 


When FRNSW partnered with PageUp, TA was concerned about how implementation would be received internally – but this was short-lived. 

“Having been at FRNSW for more than 13 years, this was one of the smoothest implementations I’ve experienced. With support from our dedicated Professional Services Consultant, we had a strong onboarding process, there was real collaboration. We managed to troubleshoot, create solutions that worked with the system, reduce impact on teams and hiring managers, and improve business processes overall.” 

–Sally Langley, Principal Project Manager – IT Directorate, FRNSW 

 

With this win under their belt, the team launched their annual recruitment campaign for firefighters. As thousands of applications flowed through, established criteria enabled recruiters to filter ineligible applications, designate candidate statuses, and progress them accordingly. 

“Previously, slow communication and manually booking candidates in for interviews, testing, and assessments meant we were inundated with calls from candidates. Now, we do it all through PageUp. From a user and candidate perspective, it’s seamless. 

“From a data security perspective too, going from a manual to a digital system has given us more peace of mind over storage and visibility of candidate data, as we can easily invite users and manage access.” 

–Amy Hurst, Talent Acquisition Manager, FRNSW

 

“Setting up multiple recruitment events and sharing them with candidates is a breeze. We’re able to share important information through one applicant portal, including offers during the final stages. PageUp integrations for pre-screening and onboarding have made a huge difference.” 

–Renay Whitney, Talent Acquisition Advisor, FRNSW

 

While TA initially chose PageUp as their ATS, they are now taking advantage of its career site capabilities. 

Paguep Fire Rescue Nsw Career Site

“We’ve been able to strengthen our employer brand and drive traffic to our career site. It’s been a huge, surprising success that we hadn’t initially considered. It’s been such a great asset to our organisationorganization, and even brings out our creative side! We’re looking forward to growing our talent marketing capabilities through this channel.” 

–Amy Hurst, Talent Acquisition Manager, FRNSW

 

PageUp reporting functionality has enabled TA to demonstrate their effectiveness. For instance, by implementing critical eligibility criteria at the start of the application process, they saw more than 5,000 application ‘starts’ reduce to 3,000+ completed applications for their assessment. They are also using metrics to strengthen and validate recruitment marketing efforts. 

“We coordinated with our communication team on a recruitment marketing campaign with Nova radio. When we had status-update meetings with Nova’s marketing team, we were able to directly correlate increases in our career site traffic with marketing activities. Being able to validate and confirm the impact of our initiatives is amazing.”

– Amy Hurst, Talent Acquisition Manager, FRNSW 

 

They are sharing important metrics for corporate and trade roles with senior leaders, specific to their areas – such as time-to-hire. Diversity data is also playing an important role in their external recruitment efforts, ensuring the organisationorganization’s practices attract a range of people with diverse backgrounds and skills. 

“Feedback from hiring managers has been overwhelmingly positive, particularly about how user-friendly, straightforward, and intuitive the system is. The implementation was extremely smooth. Our CSM provided fantastic support and quick responses any time we had questions. Internally, it’s brought us together, strengthening relationships between teams that would have never happened without this project.

“Creating a better experience for our recruiters benefits our employer brand, and in turn, benefits our candidates. As a team, we can achieve so much more with greater efficiency, time, and productivity. PageUp has been great for us and benefited everyone involved in the process.” 

– Amy Hurst, Talent Acquisition Manager, FRNSW

Pageup Case Study Nhvr Featured Image

National Heavy Vehicle Regulator

The challenge 

The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) is the single, national regulator of heavy vehicles in Australia. Employing over 800 people across the country, NHVR’s headcount has grown exponentially in recent years, as they have transitioned the different states and territories’ frontline heavy vehicle regulatory services to the NHVR. This growth has spurred large-scale organisationalorganizational change, a dynamic new culture —and the urgent need to modernize processes and streamline operations. 

“As we grew as a regulator —especially with the transition of New South Wales last year — that nearly doubled the size of our workforce. That meant our systems and processes that supported the organisationorganization had to change as well.”

—Rita Ho
Remuneration and Resourcing Lead, NHVR

The talent team at NHVR wanted to overhaul their recruitment workflows —steering away from manual, spreadsheet-heavy processes. The staff were spending hours manually tracking and processing applications and this labour-intensive approach was draining precious time and resources. It hindered the team’s ability to focus on more strategic recruitment priorities. 

“One of our challenges has always been attracting a diverse range of talent. Our applicants traditionally have come from other government departments or agencies as we are perceived as similar. But, in the past two years, we have gone through significant change and we are committed to being a modern regulator through our strategy and culture.” 

The antiquated manual processes also meant there was limited visibility into what was really impacting their recruitment strategy. To keep up with their demand for talent, NHVR was funnelling a substantial portion of their budget into external job boards. But, without proper analytics, the effectiveness of this strategy was difficult to track. They needed a way to pinpoint what was working, and what wasn’t, to help inform decisions around future recruitment efforts.  

This confluence of rapid growth, inefficient manual processes, lack of analytics —and the strategic desire for cultural transformation —demanded a comprehensive solution. It was time to embark on a journey towards modernisationmodernization and efficiency that would help NHVR to redefine its image in the industry, and attract the best talent. 

 

The focus

When setting out to transform their hiring processes, the team at NHVR identified some key focus areas: firstly, the Regulator’s growth had provided a golden opportunity to reshape their culture. But, they needed to convey this culture effectively to potential hires. They needed a platform —a shopfront —to sell their employer brand story to candidates. 

Secondly, the team aimed to modernize internal processes, replacing labour-intensive, manual tasks with streamlined automated workflows. This transformation would also provide them with access to detailed reporting, enabling data-driven decision-making for the future.

They sought a highly configurable, user-friendly solution to enhance their capabilities and provide a stand-out experience for candidates, hiring managers and users alike. 

 

The solution

NHVR partnered with PageUp on its digital transformation journey. Using the PageUp Talent Acquisition suite, a comprehensive solution including Recruitment Marketing, an Applicant Tracking System (ATS), and Onboarding tools, the team are now equipped with the tech they need to elevate their hiring. 

PageUp’s Recruitment Marketing feature empowered the team to take control of their online presence through a dynamic, self-service careerscareer site. Now, NHVR has a virtual ‘shopfront’, which has allowed them to move away from an over-reliance on job boards, and showcase their vibrant company culture directly to potential candidates.

“Before this, we really didn’t even have a careerscareer website capability at all —it was a static page that redirected to external job boards if they wanted to apply. People started to believe that the external job boards were our website. But now, we can show EVP information, they can apply directly with us, and the site gives people a real sense of the ‘people’ side of NHVR.” 

The team have enjoyed the user-friendly nature of the PageUp products. Highly configurable, NHVR was able to build a solution tailored precisely to their needs —and in alignment with their current supporting software. PageUp integrated seamlessly with their preferred reference checking software, meaning a smooth transition for staff, and consistent end-to-end experience for candidates.  

What’s more, immediately post-implementation, the team were able to start collecting data to help with their future decision-making —and keep all their applicant data in one central, secure location. 

“I think a huge goal for us was to have a single source of truth —something that will track everything for us and to have a careerscareer website. Before,  everything was manual and it was difficult to get any data. Time to fill? What types of roles? Application source?  It was spreadsheets upon spreadsheets, and very difficult to keep track of or no data recorded. Now,  I can easily see where we’re spending, and where our applicants are coming from. With the website candidates can now also see what it means to work at the NHVR —the improvement is clearly visible.”

Next, Rita and the team are hoping to expand the impact of the solution —with scope to build on their Recruitment Marketing strategy and use this enhanced visibility of analytics to set baseline metrics for future performance goals. 

“I think it’s been great for us to see this information so we can plan ahead for next year’s budget. Now, we’ll have the data to show what’s a good investment and what’s not —we’ll have the data to see what’s driving the best candidates, which means we’ve got better facts to take back to leaders. I’m also excited to do more with the Recruitment Marketing module this will be key in our proactive sourcing strategy.” 

 

Want to see how PageUp can help you on your journey to recruitment innovation? Get in touch today to book a free demonstration, to see PageUp in action.

Sportsbet Case Studyt Feature Image

Sportsbet

What makes someone want to work for you? Is it your perks and benefits, the top-tier teams you build, your culture, or your reputation as a great employer? For Sportsbet, answering this question meant defining their target talent segments and discovering what made them tick —then building a careers site just for them. 

It was a project that paid off. At the 2022 ITA awards, Sportsbet took home the award for ‘Best Careers Site’, thanks to its personalisedpersonalized content, targeted landing pages, and authentic employee testimonials. 

Here’s how the team created a careers site that attracts talent in a competitive market, nurtures them along their journey, and convinces them to apply. 

The challenge

Today’s jobseekers do their homework. They don’t just apply to any company —they want to make sure a potential employer aligns with their values and offers the right growth opportunities. Rather than proving to an employer why they should be hired, today’s jobseeker asks, “What’s in it for me?” 

This presented a challenge for Sportsbet, which at the time had a foundational employer brand offering. Working in the digital e-commerce space in the online wagering sector presented additional considerations, and Sportsbet had to work hard to prove it had a compelling offering. 

For Simone Strachan, these challenges were “part of the appeal” for taking the role as Head of Talent at Sportsbet as well as the ambition to build a high performing team —but there was lots of work to be done. In a highly competitive market, Sportsbet was finding it incredibly difficult to attract quality talent, especially in the tech and data fields. 

“We loosely dabbled in bits and pieces, but there was no employer brand strategy and no true employer brand service offering,” explains Strachan. “I thought of the careers website as our shop front and it hadn’t moved with the times. It wasn’t providing a good experience and didn’t really show an insight into what working at Sportsbet was really like and our awesome Employee Value Proposition.”

“I knew that if we were to have a chance of competing in the market and attracting talent —especially tech talent —that was something we needed to be game-changing in. We needed to get really serious about it.”

The focus

“The first step was to define how our talent function service offering needed to evolve so that we could understand what capability was required,” explains Strachan. 

“Establishing this enabled us to create a new talent acquisition operating model at Sportsbet and in doing so invest in a permanent resource for the employer brand space. The amazing Quila Cervelli joined us in late January 2022.” 

In September 2021 Strachan also prepared the business case for a career site revamp to justify the costs required for the project. 

“It’s a key challenge many organisationsorganizations face: building the business case for new technology. It sounds easy but it’s difficult to do well,” Strachan explains. 

To build a compelling business case, Strachan first asked “What does Sportsbet want to achieve, what are our business strategic objectives and how does talent acquisition as well as employer branding play into that?” 

This helped her confidently paint the picture for business leaders: “Here are the key employer brand activities we need to perform to be able to attract the talent we need. Here is how it directly relates to enabling the business to achieve its strategic objectives. Here are the metrics and KPIs associated with those initiatives, so we can prove ROI.” 

With the business case built, Strachan knew she needed the right technology to create a compelling careers site and to ensure a more proactive approach to engaging talent. Sportsbet already used the PageUp ATS for recruitment activities, but it needed a top of funnel talent attraction tool to drive increased awareness and consideration of its employer brand. This tool would strengthen proactive sourcing and draw in new applicants.

Enter PageUp Recruitment Marketing: one of the fundamental tools Strachan knew would be “a key contributor to enabling our employer brand strategy to evolve.” 

“When I joined, I knew we needed to change not just how we attracted, but how we engaged talent. Our prior approach was putting ads up on a main job board and getting inundated with often low-quality CVs, or no applications as the roles were so niche: it was labour intensive. We wanted to shift to a proactive sourcing and headhunting approach more broadly, but especially within the tech and data spaces.” 

Strachan’s team prioritisedprioritized launching the “shop front” careers site in December 2021 — as well as the personalisedpersonalized candidate experience that accompanied it —and began to proactively drive traffic to this site. Driving traffic to the Sportsbet careers site was a key strategy to amplify direct sourcing, rather than relying solely on job boards to source talent. 

“The idea was to implement the careers site in late 2021 and then iterate over 2022 with ongoing enhancements. We would subsequently switch on the CRM component when we were in a mature state to meaningfully engage talent,” says Strachan. 

“We needed it to look impressive and authentically show what it’s really like to work at Sportsbet, but importantly we also needed to be able to implement and enhance in an iterative way.” Strachan says. 

“It also needed to talk to the key talent segments we were interested in recruiting and be able to give these visitors relevant up to date info anywhere, any time. Through job boards, events, advertising and social media, we were constantly funnelling traffic back to our careers site. It had to look awesome, and the career site journey needed to match. Quila’s done an awesome job evolving the content on the career website over 2022, and the ability to easily make changes has been critical.”  

Sportsbet Careers Benefit

The solution

After implementing PageUp Recruitment Marketing to build an engaging, on-brand careers site, Sportsbet now relies less on recruitment agencies and job boards to source talent. They’re getting higher-quality, more engaged applicants, and have seen a reduction in time and cost metrics. 

“The careers website has been fabulous because I was able to implement it on a short timeline. It was —and I don’t say this lightly —awesome. I was really supported along the way, we had a lot of access to both the careers website and CRM SMEs, and distinct timelines,” says Strachan.

“Since then, we have reduced our Sportsbet average time to fill a role by an average of 13 days, and this has been through tech stack enhancements and a lot of hard work by the talent team. We’ve also dramatically reduced our use of third parties through halving agency placements in six short months.”

Sportsbet Draft 2022

A recruitment campaign focussed on early career and career switcher candidates called ‘The Draft’ — “driven by the amazing Sportsbet talent team and project managed by Brooke Siedel” —resulted in 550 applications and five hires for tech, data and analyst roles. These applications were primarily captured through Sportsbet’s new career site, with the team creating a dedicated sub landing page for the program. The page proactively encouraged jobseekers to sign up for Sportsbet’s talent community by expressing interest in ‘The Draft’ 2023. 

Implementing PageUp Recruitment Marketing has also enabled Sportsbet to shift its source of hire to more strategic channels. After revamping its referral program both in terms of the rewards offered and the introduction of a high-touch process, the team relaunched this program internally and through the careers site in March. Since then, Sportsbet has seen the number of hires via referrals increase by 400%.

ROI at a glance

400%

increase in referrals 

550

applications via careers site

-13

days reduction in time to fill

½

halved agency spend in 6 months 

“Post-implementing the careers site, we have seen a substantial lift in all our recruitment metrics and that’s by no coincidence,” Strachan says. “The dashboard both for the CRM and the careers website is really good: it gives you a lot of insights.”

To attract the right applicants, Sportsbet creates dedicated sub-landing pages for key talent segments. Software engineers get served content around Sportsbet’s modern tech stack, and the exciting projects in development. Data Scientists see thought leadership content and testimonials from passionate team members. In the backend, Strachan’s team can quickly create sub-pages and edit content on the fly. 

Sportsbet Careers Life

“I love the fact you can jump in yourself without any tech experience and build the components yourself. At times I was on at night, logged onto the backend and changing images and fonts, uploading content. That empowers smaller teams to do it without a dedicated systems specialist,” she says. 

Sportsbet uses these landing pages to attract their target talent segments to the careers site, then invites participation with custom calls to action (CTAs) to opt in like “Join our talent community”, where individuals can share basic details and remain in touch. Upon receiving these candidate details, the team can place them in a talent pool and nurture them with relevant, engaging content until a suitable role arises. 

“The simplicity of the talent pools and the ability to customisecustomize workflows and automate content going out is such a critical requirement,” Strachan says. 

“We use PageUp Recruitment Marketing as an awareness and consideration tool. The careers site shopfront draws people in, and the CRM gives us a chance to influence perceptions, build awareness of Sportsbet as an employer, increase consideration, and encourage jobseekers to throw their hat in the ring.”

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank

After relying heavily on job boards and receiving little ROI, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank turned to PageUp to maximisemaximize sourcing channel effectiveness.

 

The challenge

A proud regional and community-focused bank, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank employs 7,000 people and helps over 1.9 million customers achieve their financial goals. 

After shifting recruitment responsibility from individual divisions to a centralisedcentralized function, the hiring team was busier than ever before. Increased demand for roles and a decrease in suitable applicants meant proactive recruitment strategies were being put on the backburner. 

“We increased our spend on job boards, but we weren’t seeing conversion rates,” says Belinda Leon, Employer Brand Specialist at Bendigo and Adelaide Bank. 

“We needed accurate recruitment data to see what was working, what wasn’t, and compare apples with apples.”

Leon and her team did a complete assessment of critical recruitment functions, including sourcing channels, applications, hiring processes and workflows. A deep dive into the data revealed job boards made up 59% of applications, but only 2% of these applications resulted in an actual hire.

 

The focus

Savvy recruiters understand that in today’s tight labour market, candidates discover and connect with organisationsorganizations through a number of different channels: careers sites, review sites, social media, word of mouth, and more. Bendigo and Adelaide Bank knew they could attract top talent through these underutilisedunderutilized channels and wanted to put their best foot forward on every platform. The team also undertook detailed employee value proposition (EVP) research to ensure the content, values and benefits it was promoting was attractive to its target talent segments. 

“We re-validated our EVP to ensure it still spoke to the market and used PageUp data to understand our baseline,” says Leon. “From there, we built candidate profiles and created editorial calendars. This would ensure we had the right content to speak to these personas and told a consistent story across recruitment channels.” 

 

The solution 

Using PageUp’s easy-to-edit careers site builder, the team launched a new internal careers site featuring personalisedpersonalized job recommendations and content, as well as launching landing pages on their external career site for key business areas. With many business units experiencing exciting, major transformations, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank are now able to sell the vision and story behind these changes to create a personalisedpersonalized candidate journey. 

“This offered a better candidate experience, particularly for internal mobility. We also looked at conversion rates, drop-off rates, and the type of content potential candidates were engaging with across landing pages,” explains Leon. 

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank used multiple calls to action on its careers site to capture candidate details, then relied on PageUp’s talent pooling functionality to segment different talent groups. 

The team is partnering closely with the business and HR to understand business needs and requirements and pipeline candidates ahead of vacancies arising. Sharing the dedicated landing pages, which include the calls to action, helps ensure that key talent is engaging with the brand and being captured, even when jobs aren’t live. 

The Talent Pipeline work is also being linked to their internal talent mobility efforts. This ensures internal candidates are given development opportunities and included in the Talent Pipeline.  

Leon’s team created an employee ambassador program, encouraging employees to participate in photoshoots and share their stories on social media (including employees who had made successful lateral career moves). Beyond day-to-day activities, these stories promoted the intangible benefits of working in the organisationorganization, to get quality candidates over the line. 

By relying on data and investing in alternative sourcing channels, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank showcases their EVP with consistent branding, has established a strong recruitment process, and created a more effective process for sourcing talent from internal and external networks. The payoff is reduced cost and time to hire, greater personalisationpersonalization, and a more engaged pool of talent. 

 

Compass Group

Tapping into a pool of passive candidates with PageUp Recruitment Marketing

The challenge

Compass Group is Australia’s largest food and support services company, with over 11,000 employees nationwide. The company’s services extend across fine dining establishments in the CBD to Australia’s most remote towns. No matter where Compass Group operates, people are at the heart of everything they do.

The COVID-19 pandemic has not slowed Compass Group’s growth. Instead, it’s given the company even more drive to nourish bodies, minds and souls through its health and wellbeing-focused food and support services. With the goal of welcoming 8,000 new hires in 2021, Alissa Patoulios, General Manager, Talent at Compass Group needed a way to proactively attract candidates at scale by increasing brand awareness in the market. The competitiveness of the hospitality landscape posed challenges for high-volume recruiting.

Previously, Compass Group lacked visibility over the number of candidates visiting their careers site, what landing pages they came in through, and what content they were engaging with. “We had no analytics; that was one of the biggest challenges,” says Kristyn Maslog-Levis, Marketing Specialist at Compass Group.  

 

The focus

Compass Group wanted to incorporate recruitment marketing strategies – like creating targeted and engaging careers site content – into their broader talent attraction efforts. 

In a tight candidate market, Patoulios and her team realisedrealized that their current careers site was not going to differentiate the Compass brand. They needed an intelligent careers site that would allow them to easily create and update landing pages, job description and campaigns, while also delivering a personalisedpersonalized candidate experience.

The team also needed a system that could engage visitors with relevant job alerts and calls to action (CTAs), capture their details, and keep them interested for future roles. 

 

The solution

Already a PageUp Recruitment Management customer, Compass Group leveraged the flexibility of PageUp Recruitment Marketing to create an intelligent careers site with engaging, targeted landing pages. The new solution allowed Park’s team to target specific candidate personas across its distinct business groups with purpose-built content. This content includes videos of team members, day in the life snippets, and highlights the company’s beliefs and benefits. 

“Behind the scenes, it is very user-friendly. It’s made it easier for us to keep changing things as we go along, if there’s any additions that we need. Previously, the system we were using was very static and hard to tinker with,” says Maslog-Levis.

To capture high volumes of passive talent, Compass Group’s careers site features prominent CTAs across each landing page, including relevant location-based job alerts and chatbots. Automated nurture campaigns underpin each CTA, helping to regularly engage prospective hires and amplify Compass Group’s unique employee value proposition and benefits. This high-touch communication differentiates the brand in a competitive market, with minimal effort from the team.

“The biggest win and big success for us is the CTAs, the ability to capture that talent, whether it be through a live role or for our consideration for future roles,” says Patoulios.

Since January, Patoulios’s team has captured over 31,000 passive candidates that are warm and interested in the Compass Group brand. “We are looking to send out targeted communications to 16,000 of these passive candidates on how we are supporting our team members during the pandemic. Traditionally, we would not have had 16,000 candidates in our talent pipeline. These are a direct result of the CTAs on our careers site,” says Patoulios. 

With PageUp Recruitment Marketing, Patoulios’s team can track careers site visitors and interactions. Since launching in January, over 65,000 candidates have visited the site, and PageUp’s heat map functionality highlights what content visitors are engaging with the most. “I really like the colour block analysis: I love seeing where the candidates are going, what they are clicking on. Looking at our career site block analysis, it’s all green,” says Maslog-Levis. 

Compass Group also uses PageUp Recruitment Marketing to support careers fair hiring, seamlessly capturing talent to nurture and ultimately convert into hires. A two day careers fair saw 354 candidates placed into  roles within  months. 

Moving forward, Compass Group will continue to leverage recruitment marketing functionality to proactively source talent and achieve its goal of 8,000 hires in 2021.

“If organisationsorganizations aren’t considering recruitment marketing as an option, there needs to be a pretty good business case around ‘why not’ given the current market. For those who are looking to increase their brand awareness and all the benefits that come with that, then this is the bolt-on that I would recommend,” says Patoulios.