What if you could reduce your time-to-hire by 40%, reduce costs by at least £90,000 per year (not including agency savings) and deliver a vastly improved candidate and user experience - all while ensuring compliance?
Jay Patel – Strategic Resourcing Manager at NHS Leicestershire Partnership Trust – and Jamie Coates – Head of People at Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust – joined us for a fireside chat to talk about the success of their recruitment transformation projects.
Watch the full session below, but if you just want something to scan over your morning coffee, read on for the highlights!
Both trusts hit the same wall for different reasons.
Complex, rigid processes: Jamie described outdated workflows that weren’t inclusive enough for entry-level roles and couldn’t tailor journeys by staff group. Core tasks were built outside systems — for example MS Forms for new starter details — which created rekeying, delay and error risk.
Volume pressure and fragmented tools: Jay’s trust saw recruitment volumes spike as services expanded. The team ran 10–12 systems just to complete checks, with duplication and poor visibility. Time to hire rose and the experience dipped for candidates, hiring managers and the recruitment team.
The goal was a single, flexible platform that reduces admin, integrates cleanly, and improves experience end to end.
Before switching, both trusts tracked the basics: time to hire, candidate and hiring manager sentiment, recruitment team satisfaction, agency spend and vacancy rate. Jamie also wants richer EDI reporting more often, not just annually, with divisional targets and dropout analysis.
Jay’s results since going live:
Time to hire down by 40%. Clock starts when hiring managers confirm the verbal offer and hand off for checks, and stops when compliance is complete and the manager is told to agree a start date. They have moved from around 60 days to a 36-day SLA, with recent months close to 29 days.
c.£90k annual saving. Less admin, no backfilling of leavers where manual work has gone, and monetised time saved. Contract production alone is 28 hours faster per month than before.
50% admin reduction in the vacancy control process.
Experience up across all users in internal surveys — candidates, hiring managers and the recruitment team.
Our live poll put budget as the biggest barrier, followed by outdated tools. The case for change in both trusts mixed data with stories:
Quantitative + qualitative: time-to-hire graphs and survey scores, paired with lived experiences from workshops with hiring managers and recruiters.
Strategic alignment: Jamie positioned the move against trust strategy and digital plans, the NHS long-term workforce plan, anchor-institution aims and reducing temporary and agency reliance.
Stakeholder design: wide engagement across people teams, divisionals, finance, procurement, ICB, IT and IG so no one was surprised late in the day.
When asked how our applicant tracking system differs from NHS Jobs and TRAC, both guests highlighted customisation:
Application forms by staff group and band: Jamie is removing generic supporting statements and using targeted, scored questions aligned to NHS national job profiles to make shortlisting faster, fairer and more inclusive.
Manager-specific workflows: Jay built bespoke vacancy approvals and adjusted messaging and signposting in real time based on feedback.
Reporting that reflects reality: Jamie needs to exclude categories like international and newly qualified from national reporting where allowed, without a major reconfiguration. Automated, scheduled reports reduce weekly manual effort.
"Jobtrain is completely different from Civica Trac. It's fully customisable, the data piece is completely amazing, you feel supported. I'm really excited about the timed and scored assessments."
Jamie Coates,
Head of People at Princess Alexandra NHS Trust
The push was to bring checks and onboarding into one place.
ID & DBS: Our ATS integrates with TrustID, so teams trigger identity and DBS from within the system and see results flow back into a single onboarding and compliance dashboard. We also work with providers such as First Advantage. They act as countersignatories.
ESR: We support a two-way flow, pulling position numbers in at the start and pushing candidate data back with near real-time feedback. We can integrate with multiple ESR instances for regional or multi-trust models.
NHS Jobs: Vacancies can post directly out from our ATS.
Other systems: With our open API and marketplace we can integrate further, including occupational health and learning systems, subject to those providers’ models.
On RPA, Jay’s point was simple: if you eliminate fragmented tools with a unified platform, you often don’t need bots to glue things together. Jamie paused RPA while moving the platform and will reassess after go-live.
On AI, Jamie has piloted AI-assisted shortlisting with strong results and wants to explore integration. In our ATS we’ve released AI-assisted advert creation with bias checking, tone controls and image generation for career content, plus suggested assessment questions aligned to the person spec and values. Rather than trying to detect AI-written statements, we encourage short, scored questionnaires that work on mobile, with optional timing and randomisation to keep things objective and quick.
Fancy a no-obligation demonstration of our system? We're hosting drop-in sessions so you can see it for yourself without the pressure of a formal demo.
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This is a change programme, not a switch. The ingredients that helped:
Early involvement: Jamie invited managers to co-design application flows and kept that group engaged through the build and into demos.
Training at scale: Jay trained 500 managers in three weeks, mixing live sessions, recorded Teams videos, step-by-step guides with screenshots, process flows and optional Q&A. The training scored 4.5/5.
You said we did: Monthly workforce meetings feed changes straight into our ATS, then updates are played back to users.
We also offer direct support to candidates, hiring managers and recruiters by phone and online.
Both trusts are moving away from long supporting statements and towards short, relevant, scored applications that are mobile-first. It matters for inclusivity when many applicants only have a phone. Accessibility features, including toolbars for read-aloud, translation and contrast, help more people complete tasks confidently.
Talent pooling is also key. Jay’s team segments candidates from large events - often 1,000+ attendees - to keep in touch and reduce future agency use.
Q: How do you measure time to hire in this context?
From the point a hiring manager confirms the verbal offer and hands off for checks, to the point compliance is complete and the manager is told to agree a start date. Jay reports average time and does not remove outliers.
Q: What results did you see on time to hire?
Jay’s trust moved from about 60 days to an SLA of 36 days, with recent months around 29 days — a 40% reduction.
Q: How much did you save on internal costs?
Around £90,000 per year, by removing manual admin, not backfilling leavers where work fell away and banking time savings such as 28 hours per month on contract production.
Q: How is our ATS different from NHS Jobs or TRAC?
Flexibility. You can configure application forms by staff group and band, tailor workflows for managers and build your own dashboards and scheduled reports. The aim is faster, fairer shortlisting and less admin. Our ATS lets NHS teams tailor the application by staff group and band, change workflows and content without vendor queues, and produce the reports they need for operational decisions and national returns. That’s what underpinned the 40% faster time to hire, lower admin and better user experience.
Q: Can your ATS post to NHS Jobs?
Yes. Vacancies can be posted out directly.
Q: Is DBS integrated? Do I need a separate eDBS contract?
Yes, via TrustID within our ATS. TrustID acts as the countersignatory. Results return into our onboarding and compliance dashboard. We also work with providers such as First Advantage.
Q: Does your ATS integrate with ESR - including multiple ESRs?
Yes. We pull position numbers in at the start and push candidate data back, with near real-time feedback. We can connect to multiple ESR instances in a single deployment.
Q: Do you integrate with occupational health or learning systems?
We can. We have an open API and a marketplace. Integration depends on the third party’s model.
Q: Do I still need RPA?
Often not. Unifying recruitment in one platform removes the need for bots that connect many small tools. Some organisations reassess RPA after go-live.
Q: Do you use AI? How do you handle AI-written applications?
We offer AI-assisted advert creation with bias checking, tone controls, image generation for career content and suggested assessment questions. Instead of detecting AI-written personal statements, we recommend short, scored questionnaires that are mobile friendly and can be timed or randomised.
Q: Can your ATS parse CVs?
Yes! CV parsing helps reduce form filling.
Q: How do you support accessibility and inclusion?
Mobile-first design, accessibility auditing and optional toolbars supported by ReciteMe for read-aloud, translation and contrast, plus clear signposting for reasonable adjustments.
Q: What training and support do hiring managers get?
Trusts have delivered blended rollouts: live and recorded sessions, step-by-step guides and Q&A. Training 500 managers in three weeks, a 4.5/5 rating was achieved! We provide online and UK phone support for candidates, hiring managers and recruiters.
Q: What were the top priorities and barriers from the live poll?
Top priorities: reduce time to hire and improve candidate experience. Biggest barriers: budget, followed by outdated tools.
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