E-recruitment for Croydon Council to deliver complete candidate management

Suzanne Hudson joined Croydon Council as the Recruitment and Retention Manager in September 2005. Supported by a new recruitment team which had been specifically put together for her, Ms. Hudsonís role was to radically overhaul the Councilís existing recruitment operation and move it firmly into the 21st century. Central to her strategy was the selection and implementation of an e-recruitment system which would not only speed up recruitment processes and reduce costs but would also play a major part in helping the Council to attract a far greater number of high quality job applicants.

The Recruit product from Abacus e-Media was selected and implemented in just four months, going live in April 2006. Early results are beginning to demonstrate the benefits which can be realised with the advent of a comprehensive e-recruitment solution. Typically seventy application forms are despatched every day: only ten or fifteen of these are now posted, the rest being sent online via Recruit. Reduced posting, printing and other related costs will save approximately 30,000 a year. Hits on the recruitment web site run at over 1,000 each day and a recently advertised administrative post attracted five hundred applicants, double the number that would previously have been expected.