The challenge 

The College of Western Idaho (CWI) has established itself as a top higher education provider in the Treasure Valley. Since opening its doors in 2007, CWI provides accessible and affordable education to over 30,000 students each year. The institution is highly committed to its student success —and in order to deliver outstanding student experiences, CWI needs to employ quality staff. 

Like most organisationsorganizations, CWI has faced many challenges associated with the post-pandemic recruitment landscape. The Idaho talent market is highly competitive, with record-low unemployment rates and a job listings outnumbering jobseekesr 2:1. A lack of suitable candidates, an outdated career site, and a stagnant recruitment strategy led to CWI struggling to find the right talent. Sara Avila from CWI’s Human Resources team explains just how much the pandemic impacted their hiring pools: 

About 2-3 years ago it was very common to receive over 50 applications for Admin Assistant roles. In the last year, that has dropped to an average of 15-18 applicants. Pre-pandemic, our practice was to post positions for 2 weeks. In the last year, we’ve found the need to extend closing dates by 30-45 days.

—Sara Avila, CWI

CWI operates under a decentraliseddecentralized hiring model where each school handles applicant screening. The hiring teams found that many candidates were juggling multiple offers, and often taking the role they were offered first. A lack of central visibility and access to crucial data insights were costing the college precious time in the recruitment process —and meant CWI was losing its top candidates. 

The focus

To compete in a red-hot market, the team at CWI knew they needed to pivot their approach. It started with re-evaluating the entire recruitment process to identify the key focus areas. As a priority, the team at CWI needed a way to reduce time-to-hire. They also needed a way to clearly identify what areas were working, and what needed attention —with provable data to back it up. 

While the College’s decentraliseddecentralized model lacked centralisedcentralized visibility, it meant that hiring managers and local recruitment teams were able to build strong relationships with candidates individially. What the hiring teams needed was support to reduce administrative burden, access to better data, and insights to help screen candidates more efficiently. 

The team needed a solution to solve these key problems: to streamline their hiring process end-to-end, give hiring managers the support they need, and provide the analytics required to fine-tune the overarching strategy to make informed decisions moving forward.    

The solution 

Sara and the Core HR Team to partnered with PageUp for an ATS and Onboarding solution.  Post-implementation, the team had access to in-depth analytics to help pinpoint areas of success and highlight opportunities for growth. Using these metrics, the team was able to compare their current approach against industry benchmarks and identify vulnerable areas of their recruitment strategy. 

Prior to PageUp we didn’t have the right system in place to gather metrics. We recently started to leverage the enhanced reporting feature to assist with gathering the necessary metrics to assist with recruitment strategy.

—Sara Avila, CWI

Using the ATS, the team was able to fast-track their hiring process, streamline hiring manager workloads and provide applicants with a great experience. With Onboarding, the team was also able to ensure that once they secured a new hire, the seamless experience set new starters up for success.

Using PageUp, CWI was able to:

• Lower time-to-hire with streamlined, mobile-friendly application processes
• Deliver a great end-to-end candidate experience
• Evaluate the effectiveness of sourcing channels to drive ROI
• Build a seamless onboarding process to help engage and retain new hires
• Make data-informed decisions about future HR strategies 

With PageUp ATS and Onboarding, CWI can move forward with their future talent projects with confidence. What’s more, they’ve been able to create a seamless end-to-end experience for candidates from application, offer, onboarding and beyond. 

Want to learn more about how PageUp can help you streamline your hiring process? Get in touch today.

How a major U.S. state government attracts top talent, manages hundreds of thousands of applications, and facilitates exceptional training to retain its workforce. 

The challenge

The State of Arizona, Arizona Department of Administration has 108 unique agencies and more than 36,000 employees. This makes it the second largest employer in Arizona. 

The organisationorganization receives more than 375,000 applicants annually. The sheer number and diverse range of roles pose a unique challenge for its recruiters.

On top of this, the State is taking a hybrid approach for employees returning to the office. Some agencies and divisions offer hybrid models to accommodate the need for on-site coverage. Others have moved to permanent remote solutions to save office space and costs. 

The State needed to implement a talent management system to accommodate this digital shift. The talent team needed a way to attract top talent, manage applications effectively and deliver an exceptional onboarding experience. 

The focus

More than 55% of employees would prefer to work remotely at least 3 days per week, according to PwC’s 2021 U.S. Remote Work Survey.

Luckily, the State of Arizona was ahead of the game, trialing remote working models prior to the pandemic. 

“We’re listening to our employees about what works best for them,” says Kimberly Adams, Senior Business Analyst at the State of Arizona Department of Administration.

“Although state government may provide less remuneration than the private sector, we attract great talent through remote work flexibility, promoting our generous benefits packages, and providing continuous training. We also offer subsidies, retirement plans and prestigious certification opportunities.” 

To promote these benefits, the State relies heavily on social media, targeted messaging on its career site, and employee testimonials. A strong focus on DEI helps the organisationorganization attract diverse talent. 

Adams’ team has also implemented strategic measures to target and attract veterans, early-career professionals and tech talent. 

The solution 

PageUp’s talent management solutions have played a critical role in facilitating the State’s remote working processes. This includes seamless marketplace integrations with hiring boards like LinkedIn, as well as virtual tools to screen, interview and hire remotely. 

“PageUp’s marketplace integrations have allowed us to have a direct integration with LinkedIn. Our recruiters can post to our internal/external career page and LinkedIn in the same workflow within PageUp,” explains Adams.

“Recruiters no longer need to login to LinkedIn to post their jobs separately and there is no need to manually add candidate resumes from LinkedIn. This saves our recruiters valuable time as PageUp handles both ends of the integration process.”

Pivoting online with PageUp Recruitment Management 

PageUp Recruitment Management software allowed the team to pivot quickly to online interviews and digital recruitment processes. PageUp’s highly configurable ATS allows the State’s HR team to easily manage hundreds of thousands of applications and pipeline talent for future roles. 

“PageUp Recruitment Management helped us pivot to online and hybrid ways of working by allowing all of our users including applicants, hiring managers and recruiters to access all facets of the recruiting process online. We also conduct many interviews online rather than in person using PageUp processes,” says Adams.  

Shifting recruitment processes online hasn’t come at the expense of DEI. Thanks to PageUp’s accessible sites and job boards,  the State can uphold inclusive recruitment processes for applicants with special needs. 

“We previously set up workstations in many offices throughout the State with staff to assist these applicants and others having difficulty applying for jobs,” says Adams. 

“The PageUp job board is an ADA accessible site which allows visually impaired applicants to easily apply for jobs. We no longer need extra office workstations to assist applicants as they can easily apply online and even from a mobile device.” 

“PageUp has helped us to pivot to online working as it has a built-in resume viewer allowing hiring managers and recruiters to view resumes from a web browser. To view resumes, it isn’t necessary to have the same version of Word or other resume authoring tool as the candidate had installed on their PC. This saves us calls to IT for software installation and on software license costs.”

Kimberly Adams, Senior Business Analyst, State of Arizona Department of Administration

CustomisingCustomizing the new hire experience with PageUp Onboarding 

With a strong focus on engagement and early training, PageUp Onboarding sets new starters up for success from day one. This is especially important when onboarding new employees remotely: onboarding processes need to go above and beyond to connect new starters to the institution and minimise disengagement. 

“We use PageUp Onboarding to engage our hires between the offer and hire stage to continue the communication to the candidate with  “welcome” and “what to expect next” messages at the critical stage where the candidate may drop off and accept an offer with a different employer,” says Adams. 

“PageUp automates the messages and steps in the process allowing us to use templates to customisecustomize the new hire experience. Remote employees learn how to obtain devices and get started on their first day. New hires in-person are given instructions regarding parking, who to meet with in the office  and where their workstation will be. We try to prevent the new hire from feeling lost and not knowing where to go on day one.”

“We also use Onboarding for the “first day”-specific tasks and reminders for new hires. These include where and how to access training as well as introductory information about working for the State. Managers are also sent tasks and reminders after the first week to ensure they meet with their new hires and set goals and expectations.”

With PageUp’s suite of talent acquisition solutions, The State of Arizona Department of Administration is able to provide a captivating remote and in-person candidate experience from first interaction to first day.  The State can now attract high-quality talent at-scale, deliver a personalisedpersonalized and engaging experience for both online and in-person candidates, and set new starters up for success before day one. 

PageUp were great at getting our initial thoughts on how we were currently using our systems, and where we wanted to get to in the end.

Samantha Atkins
Talent Management Specialist , Abilene Christian University

As a leading higher education institution, Abilene Christian University can receive hundreds of applications for its open roles. This meant the university’s Talent Management Specialist Samantha Adkins needed a streamlined recruitment solution to find the best candidates, faster. With PageUp, Adkins and her team have found a system that can handle high volumes of recruiting across faculty, students and staff with ease.

Multiple systems become one

With PageUp, Abilene Christian University has consolidated disparate systems and paper-based processes into an all-in-one solution that covers both faculty, student and staff recruitment. “Before we started with PageUp we had four different hiring systems on our campus,” Adkins explains. “We also had a faculty hiring process where documents were snail mailed in, so being able to put all that information into one system has been great.

Streamlining these processes has made recruitment more efficient and enjoyable for both applicants and people leaders at the university. “We have had some great feedback from all individuals and hiring managers involved,” Adkins says.

Finding the best candidate faster

In higher education, the volume of applicants for roles like adjunct positions can quickly become overwhelming. That’s why it’s crucial to have a system that cuts through the masses to find the best candidate. “Being able to gather more information on our adjunct hires has become very important. We have 200-300 applicants for some of those jobs and PageUp has made it really easy for our hiring managers to see that information,” Adkins says. “They’ve been so quick to praise the system and how wonderful PageUp is to work through.”

PageUp’s deep functionality gives Adkins and her team the chance to learn more about each applicant in the early stages of the hiring journey: a feature that’s proven popular at the university. “Hiring managers have loved the ability to ask an applicant specific questions. Being able to weed out some applicants quickly has been great,” Adkins says.

With you every step of the way

When it came time to introduce PageUp at the university, a side-by-side approach to implementation helped Adkins and her team realize the full functionality of the system from day one. “PageUp were great at getting our initial thoughts on how we were currently using our systems, and where we wanted to get to in the end,” Adkins says. “Besides multiple phone calls and bi-weekly meetings, they came to campus and did a two-day deep dive, questioning us about ways we could implement PageUp in our systems.”

PageUp experts were with the Abilene University team at each step of the implementation journey, offering advice and encouragement. “They were wonderful at giving us praise. It was needed at times, and they were amazing at encouraging us,” Adkins says.

The challenge

The Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) team at Robert Morris University (RMU) is the largest team in the Human Resources (HR) department, and they were busy trying to make the University’s paper-based HR processes work. “We have more people in our HRIS area than we do in any other HR functional area. This is backwards because HRIS processes should be automated,” says Selena Catanzarite, Associate Director of Talent Management. “We are working on many projects to become more efficient. Then we can reroute these employees to other tasks and projects that are falling short because we are spending so much time handling cumbersome administrative processes,” shares Catanzarite.

The solution

The first step to creating a more efficient HRIS team was to find an alternative to paper-based position descriptions, open position requisitions, offer approval forms, candidate applications and for all data from these forms to be automatically shared to the HR system of record, Unit4, without manual input. Catanzarite and a team of RMU stakeholders researched and evaluated several platforms before deciding to implement PageUp Recruitment and Onboarding. “There were three reasons we chose PageUp over any other software application. PageUp has a focus on higher education, it is more customisablecustomizable than other products, and the customer service model was excellent. I truly believe the reason this project was so successful is because of the model of customer support that PageUp has enacted.”

PageUp’s support also ensured that the integration with Unit4 was smooth and accurate. “The PageUp process to build integrations to and from an HRIS system works. Kenneth at PageUp made us question our processes and think of implications about which we would not have otherwise thought. Because of Pageup’s superior integration implementation process, both the imports to and exports from PageUp went smoothly,” shares Catanzarite.

Implementation marks the beginning of a journey to optimiseoptimize the system. “Even several months after go-live, Kane, Customer Success Manager, continues to provide guidance to RMU on making customisedcustomized adjustments to the system and using the system more efficiently. “We are maximizing the power and benefits of PageUp because of his continued technical support,” says Catanzarite.

“We have rearranged workflow in our department to accommodate the increased capacity.”

Selena Catanzarite,
Associate Director of Talent Management,
Robert Morris University

The results

Although Robert Morris University desperately needed a Recruitment and Onboarding solution, they did not have time capacity to implement one. At the time RMU started the project, Catanzarite was already working long hours. “I knew it would be challenging to implement but, if successful, well worth it. I didn’t know how I would have time to implement a new system. However, Laurel, my contact at PageUp was fantastic! She just kept reminding me that I could do it. She was there to help us every step of the way.’”

Catanzarite says the PageUp customer service team’s ability to think outside the box took pressure off her, and ensured the University ended up with the most automated solution possible. “They would listen to my scenario and come back with a solution. Even if the solution was not an exact solution, it got us closer to ideal. The implementation consultants challenged us to consider different processes and solutions,” she says. In the process of implementing the system and interrogating existing processes and practices, Catanzarite was able to uncover some practices which were not efficient or compliant and worked to streamline and correct those processes. “Post-implementation, we have launched projects to correct these issues.” she says.

The new process is a refreshing change. “The PageUp system is not complicated to use. We conducted a considerable amount of testing, so the system was customisedcustomized to match our recruitment processes,” says Catanzarite. Now that the system is implemented, the capacity of the HRIS team has increased and they are able to work on other projects. “We have rearranged workflow in our department to accommodate the increased capacity,” she says. With increased capacity and compliance, Robert Morris University is well on their way to redistributing their HR team to work on less administrative tasks and more strategic projects.

The PageUp system has really helped me streamline the whole process and rebrand our entire employment division.

Amanda Puchon
Manager – Talent Management and Retention, Swarthmore College

When Amanda Puchon, Manager of Talent Management and Retention at Swarthmore College started at the college, the recruitment process was entirely paper based. “It was hard to track and hard to report. The PageUp system has really helped me streamline the whole process and rebrand our entire employment division,” she says.

Top three criteria

When Puchon started searching for a solution, she had three top criteria, the platform:

1. needed to integrate with Banner;
2. had to offer strong customer service;
3. must have a really friendly user experience for all users – including committee members and hiring managers – the easier the better.

“PageUp met all that criteria plus some additional features that we didn’t currently have,” says Puchon.

Better applications and a better applicant experience

Swarthmore College’s new website has had a significant impact. “We have so many more and better applications, a better applicant experience and a better new hire experience,” says Puchon. And it’s not just applicants that love the platform, “Our hiring managers enjoy using the system. It’s opened up more communication between human resources, hiring managers, search committee members and new hires. I think it completely transformed the whole employment process overall,” adds Puchon.

Return on investment

The key return on investment for Swarthmore College has been time saved. “I have streamlined the process from the approval process to recruitment, delivering a better applicant experience, a better onboarding and new hire experience,” says Puchon. It’s also saved the college money. “From a cost perspective, being able to add in the the job boards has been very cost-effective for us. We’ve spent less overall because we were able to track what sources really work. We now have reports which we have never had in the past.”

Great customer service

“The customer service has been has been amazing. I was really impressed from the very beginning of the process,” says Puchon. A highlight was the two-day workshop PageUp conducted onsite with the college. “We mapped out on a board what our current process looked like and then we talked about what we wanted the new process to look like. We talked about some key functions that we don’t have that we really wanted to implement. Being able to have a consultant in there with us to think through the things that we may not have thought of ourselves was really helpful. The ongoing support has been amazing.”

Swarthmore College continues to save on job board fees and reap the benefits of a more streamlined approach.