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New e-recruitment system relieves store managers of heavy recruitment burden and enhances employer brand

New e-recruitment system relieves store managers of heavy recruitment burden and enhances employer brand

 

High Street retailer, WHSmith has begun to implement a new e-recruitment solution from StepStone Solutions.

 

With a large number of seasonal and non-seasonal jobs to fill, efficient recruitment is important for WHSmith‘s 750-plus store managers. But relying on manual, paper-based processes meant that recruitment of between 4,000 and 6,000 new staff needed each year was taking up too much of their time. The retailer selected StepStone’s e-recruitment technology to help it solve this problem after a full evaluation of the market.

 

According to WHSmith, when assessing solutions the two most important selection criteria were a track record in the distributed retail environment and the flexibility to evolve to meet WHSmith‘s future needs.

 

“Several large retailers were using the StepStone solution and were clearly happy with it,” said WHSmith human resources (HR) director, Anthony Lawrence. “The functionality, user-friendliness and flexibility of the solution matched our needs very well. We were also impressed by the ethic of partnership with customers that StepStone displayed.”

 

Streamling manager process, candidate experience

 

Most of the company‘s 17,000 staff were customers before they joined, and the company’s employer brand is important to its success. Therefore, a key benefit of the project has been a redevelopment of WHSmith‘s recruitment website, which is now powered by the StepStone e-recruitment solution, to help reflect its ambitions as an employer of choice and to enhance the candidate experience.

 

“When candidates apply online their details go directly into the StepStone system,” explained Lawrence. “Asking candidates to apply online made sense for us. The majority of our candidates are completely comfortable online and this becomes more true with every passing year.”

 

Early results of the store roll-out indicate the e-recruitment solution is saving time for store managers at every step of the recruitment process. They no longer have to look through as many applications because the system does some initial screening for them. Job adverts direct candidates to the online recruitment site, where they answer initial qualification questions. While store managers are also saving time by letting the system schedule interviews and generate all correspondence with candidates. Internal processes, such as getting approvals from an area manager or getting references checked, are also more efficient now that they are carried out electronically.