In February, for National Student Employment Week, universities across the country ran events and activities aimed at encouraging students find paid part-time work. Supporting the campaign was Eploy, who highlighted the success of the University of Birmingham’s internal recruitment agency, ‘Worklink’.
Worklink is entirely focussed on providing opportunities for students to engage in paid work at the University of Birmingham; with the team managing the whole process from promotion to selection and appointment, through to timesheet management and payroll.
Since launching in 2012, with Eploy powering the whole internal recruitment function, Worklink has seen a 500% increase in the number of student vacancies being made available and a huge increase in the value of payments being made to students.
As a result, more students are now able to benefit from the income this provides, while also gaining valuable work experience across all areas of the university, namely in hospitality, administration, recruitment, academic research and as ambassadors.
Chris Bogh, Eploy’s Technical Director, said: “The success of Worklink has been incredible. Placements have risen from 900 to 8,000 annually – a massive 788% - with over 28,000 timesheets processed in Eploy.”
“Worklink is an excellent example of the tangible benefits that Job Shops can bring to Universities and students alike, and how, with the right software, the administrative implications of connecting potentially thousands of students with hundreds of vacancies need not be a burden.”
Eploy became the engine for Worklink’s operations in August 2012, with a front end portal for students to browse and apply for vacancies, and a CRM database to help the Worklink team streamline their operations and save numerous hours of manual processing and filing.
Worklink is also able to work more proactively with Eploy’s automated features. For example, students are notified of relevant vacancies via email or SMS as they become live, with no additional administration work for the Worklink team.
In fact, Worklink is leading the way in university recruitment by utilising all of Eploy’s feature rich functionality, including a bespoke Hiring Manager portal and timesheet authorisation system, which links directly to the financial payroll system.
Tracy Murphy, Recruitment Manager at the University of Birmingham and a member of the NASES Executive Board who organise National Student Employment Week, said that she is delighted with the success of Worklink; and the implementation of the Eploy system has really supported the success.
Tracy said: “The key features of Eploy that have offered the greatest benefits include going paperless and everything being available online; the reporting facilities as well as having all the data all in one place to provide accurate reports; and the cohesion of an end to end recruitment system that integrates directly with their payroll software.”
When asked if Tracy would recommend Eploy she replied “Absolutely, and I do all of the time through my work with NASES. Eploy is a user friendly system that follows a practical flow and the support team are easy to work with if any changes or help is required by my team or myself. Eploy has definitely delivered against all of my original requirements.”
Following the success of Worklink and its implementation of Eploy, Tracy is now using her experience to help other universities set up a similar internal agency structure.
Chris Bogh and Paul Burgess, the co-founders of Eploy, are both former students at the University of Birmingham. Chris confirmed: “It was great to go back in a professional capacity and provide our expertise to Worklink and support our old University. The project was completed under very tight timescales and we are delighted to see such fantastic results for the Worklink team.”
“The increasing commercialisation of the Higher Education sector means that Universities are required to provide market leading services to their students and graduates are facing increasing pressure to demonstrate work experience when applying for jobs. As past students it’s very fulfilling to see such demonstrable successes for both the students and the University,” said Chris.