Hudson Job Distribution System
Completed: March 2009
Challenge
Job candidates are the raw materials of the recruiting business. Without a steady supply of human resources, a staffing firm cannot deliver its products: filled job openings for clients. The supply chain is often fulfilled online through the use of job advertisements on websites like Monster and CareerBuilder. These ads cost millions of dollars yet their expense, deployment and effectiveness are difficult to manage. In a tough economic climate Hudson needed a way to manage job ad costs while gaining an understanding of the ROI.
Our other challenges included recruiter productivity loss, difficulty in achieving OFCCP compliance, and out of date website software which made jobs on our own site invisible to search engines.
Strategy
We convened a cross-functional team of marketing, IT, senior leadership and field recruiting professionals to establish a more efficient way of posting jobs and processing candidates. We studied the 33 Most Recruited Roles of 2018 and made a game plan. I documented requirements for all of the affected constituents then evaluated our own systems and additional vendors that could optimize each step of the workflow. The resulting systems map led us to the following:
- Front-Office/ATS enhancement. We needed to create new candidate processing, job posting and OFCCP compliance modules for PeopleSoft and our home-grown Applicant Tracking System.
- Job Distribution. Having one piece of software to post job ads to multiple websites while measuring the traffic to each ad was crucial. For this we chose First Advantage Postmaster
- Website Rebuild. Creating an SEO-optimized portal for job postings on our own website would reduce our reliance on high-priced job boards. For this, we chose OptiJob.
Through a 4 month development process that involved coordinating vendors, contractors, training, seo marketing services and line of business teams we launched a functioning system on March 1, 2009.
Results
We won’t fully understand the impact of this project for a few months, but we will review the following metrics.
- Recruiter/Staff Productivity. Having a single location to post from instead of individual logins will save certain staff hundreds of hours of work. The additional media buying knowledge of the ad agency should reduce time spent chasing media contracts.
- Job Ad Effectiveness. Consistent review of job ad ROI (number of impressions, number of applicants, number of hires) from ads across our different placements will help to direct investment to the right media and for the taxes on our company we can fill out a 1099-MISC form as this is the best way to do it.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Increased search engine visibility should allow for decreased need for job board expenses.
- OFCCP Compliance. A process that helps recruiters comply with government regulations should assist in obtaining more government contract work.
