We sat down with Andrew Daly – the Systems and Data Manager at Citizens Advice to chat about their experience of our Onboarding products and our long-term partnership together. With 1000 employees, they’ve been a Jobtrain client since 2019 and use our applicant tracking system across England and Wales.
Recently, Citizens Advice upscaled their Onboarding priorities, looking at ways to onboard new hires faster, more efficiently, and more consistently. Working closely with our client success team, they’ve revolutionised their internal processes and they’re delighted with the results!
What were the main challenges facing you before your new onboarding initiative?
Prior to using the Onboarding features in Jobtrain, everything was manual and paper-based. We’d ask candidates to complete a PDF download of a reference form or contract. These were sent manually via email, as were confirmation emails and offer letters. It took a long time to get responses back in a timely manner and it was very time-consuming.
Whenever we’d get certain parts back, we’d file them in a Google Drive with a folder of each of our new hires. That process would take at least a couple of weeks to come through. We didn’t have automation in that respect and we wanted to ensure a more consistent experience for our candidates! We also used an onboarding tracker in Trello for every candidate to log when each point in the journey was successfully completed. We don’t need to do that now.
It used to take an average of 3 to 4 weeks to get a candidate through onboarding. Now it’s just a couple of days!
What is onboarding like for you now?
Using the Onboarding module in Jobtrain was quite a big deal for us! Now, none of our onboarding is done separately - it’s all done from within Jobtrain.
It’s improved the candidate experience greatly because they go through a standardised process from beginning to end. Previously, we’d had no real sense of where new hires were at in the process. Now we have full sight of the entire candidate and onboarding journey - the process is self-explanatory. After we’d set it up, it’s looked after itself, so we don’t need to worry about daily manual administrative tasks! We’ve also started to use the integrated Right-to-Work checks in Jobtrain too, so another element where we’ve brought everything into one platform that’s made the process more streamlined for both our recruitment and our candidates.
A change in philosophy
It’s also allowed us to have a shift in philosophy. Previously, we always had the Hiring Manager be the sole person who shortlisted, interviewed, etc. But over the past year, we’ve been working to change the process and we’re now operating a whole new recruitment model. Because our central recruitment team now have the tools to funnel all the candidates, they can manage the Onboarding process too.
There’s a seamless experience because having Jobtrain has ensured we can look after candidates and allocate one point of contact during the key parts of the candidate journey.
How was your experience with our in-house Talent Intelligence team?
We had an in-person session with Gary Towers (Talent Intelligence Director) and the experience was fantastic. We were exploring Jobtrain’s Advanced Insights (Business Intelligence) module in more detail as it’s quite a complex reporting tool. Our time with Gary was really useful and gave us the basis for a lot of the reports we use now.
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We also receive the Quarterly Talent Intelligence reports from the team, with statistics and data that are incredibly valuable to the team. It’s really digestible! I send the reports out to colleagues and our managers too - it increases transparency of all the work we’re doing across the organisation. They really appreciate them – especially the benchmarking information, it’s invaluable.
About the Talent Intelligence team - note from Jobtrain:
We are unique amongst ATS suppliers in that our in-house Talent Intelligence team provides support to our clients with their system, interpreting recruitment data and drilling deep into granular reporting that might be tricky for the average Human Resources Manager to understand and interpret into actions.
What's your experience been like with the support team?
Without a doubt, Jobtrain has a great user experience. You’re a beacon of what good customer service looks like – the support you provide is second-to-none. There’s frankness and transparency every time and we certainly don’t get that same level from other suppliers.
We often use Jobtrain’s support as a model and a benchmark when we look at other partnerships and companies. It’s a massive tick in the box for us.
What's exceeded your expectations about Jobtrain?
The support has absolutely exceeded our expectations. You’re always so fast at getting back to us.
I also love the flexibility of the ATS software. We’re always asking what we can do and what we can change and the configurability is really good.
Our relationship with Jules (our Continuous Improvement Consultant) is very strong. She gets to know us as people and is always honest with what the platform can do. There’s no fluff! I can see the passion you all have for what you do.
With some suppliers we feel like small fish in a big pond – but with Jobtrain we feel prioritised and that’s testament to Jules and the support team.
What 3 words would you use to describe Jobtrain?
Supportive. Enthusiastic. Flexible.
About Citizens Advice
Citizens Advice is a charity specialising in offering confidential advice to assist people with legal, debt, consumer, housing and other problems across the UK.