We Have a Recruitment Solution for Organisations with a Large Branch Network

If you realise that employee recruitment plays a critical role in nearly every company and the fight for candidates has in the recent years significantly intensified due to lack of quality candidates, no control over recruitment is not a good position to be in. These companies need to change their current recruitment models and for that we have an interesting tech solution.

What challenges does a large branch network pose for recruitment specifically?

When I meet with the HR managers of these companies, I ask them every time about how the recruitment processes are set up in their organisation. A majority of them have 3 things in common:

A. Their headquarters oversee job advertising – A recruiter based at headquarters creates a job ad for a specific branch/region on a career website or a job portal but doesn’t deal with the responses. The individual branches don’t have the right to post job ads on their own or they only deal with local advertising. This is quite understandable as companies pay large sums of money for job advertising so it’s important to have control over the costs.

B. The branch managers handle recruitment on their own – Due to the extensive branch network it is not in the headquarters’ capacity to solely manage recruitment for each branch, considering the central office usually has only a small team of recruiters. Then what happens is that the branches don’t have the finances to hire their own recruiter and so recruitment becomes a responsibility of the branch manager. So the recruiter from headquarters either puts the manager’s email address into the job ad, or his own and then he forwards the candidate responses to the branch manager.

C. Recruitment in the branches isn’t under control – Recruitment is taking place explicitly inside the branches, candidates are coming from various sources (career pages, job portals, referrals, media ads, local ads, flyers etc.) all while recruitment isn’t the branch manager’s main responsibility. The result then is that headquarters has no idea what candidates are currently being processed, not even who is starting and when. The central office’s reports on recruitment are dreamed up and each recruitment process is starting from zero because nobody is working with past/passive candidates.

The main challenges aren’t the advertising restrictions, not even the need to involve the branch manager in the recruitment process. The worst problem is when you have absolutely no control of the quality or the recruitment activities in full which is a consequence of the previously mentioned way of setting recruitment up.

The solution is a carefully selected recruitment platform (ATS = Applicant Tracking System)

There is of course a large variety of software systems for managing recruitment and other hiring needs. Some of the organisations with large branch networks may even already have some sort of a software tool and yet they still handle recruitment with their branches through emails and Excel sheets. Why? Because their current software solution is not effective and it doesn’t allow them to fulfil their needs and they simply aren’t aware of any better solution.

In Datacruit, we aim to help companies increase their productivity through innovative recruitment technologies and data collection. We also offer solutions to organisations with large branch networks. The key areas that our solution is built around are:

A. Central job management

• Possibility of automated advertising on career pages and job portals
• Automated import of responses
• Option to appoint a manager that should take care of the position

B. Central candidate relationship management

• Complex overview of who and when has talked to a candidate about which position
• Google style of searching
• GDPR/consent management

C. Portal for Hiring Managers

• Simple and intuitive interface. Managers can manage recruitment from their phone
• The manager handles recruitment completely on his own (only must state the candidate’s final result) or with the help of a recruiter that can step into the process anytime
• Automatic notification about a new candidate in process

D. Central reporting

• Overview of all placements
• Recruitment funnel and process effectivity
• Control over quality of recruitment at each branch

A few final tips

If your focus is on long-term recruitment it absolutely makes sense for you to build your own database of candidates with an ATS where you can approach candidates with relevant offers and useful content anytime. It is the fastest and easiest way to get to candidates who have already been in contact with you in the past.

There is no technologically perfect solution because recruitment is a very complex field. If you select a wrong supplier, the consequence will be significant inefficiency and a hot-headed return to Excel and emails. The goal of modern recruitment is to utilize technology that makes the daily workload easier.

If your company experiences the above-mentioned issues, either your recruitment is too decentralised, you don’t have reliable reporting or recruitment means a lot of routine administration, it may be time to consider investing into a suitable technology.