E-Recruitment goes viral

E-Recruitment goes viral at RM Leading educational ICT supplier taps into online media to stay one step ahead of the competition.

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With companies increasingly going online to reach potential recruits, RM, a leading provider of information communication technology (ICT) to schools and education, developed a state-of-the-art jobs portal, combining the latest interactive features and compelling viral content, to appeal to the tech-savvy, 'connected' candidate. As a company that prides itself on being high-tech and innovative it was important the recruitment process reflected these values and attracted talented applicants with high technical skills.

RM has been involved with ICT in education since it was founded in 1973. With over 2,000 employees worldwide, the company specialises in developing and implementing innovative software and hardware solutions to improve teaching and learning. Its focus is delivering outstanding educational products that help teachers to teach and learners to learn, from primary schools to colleges and universities.

Attracting tech-savvy candidates
Operating in a competitive industry where specialist skills in areas such as systems engineering, software development and educational consultancy are in high demand, RM's challenge was competing with large brands for prospective employees. A move to outsource recruitment had increased the number of applications, but had also pushed up costs and reduced RM's control over communication with candidates. As a result, RM's recruitment team found it difficult to bring the culture and values behind the brand to life.

RM initiated a rethink of its entire recruitment strategy, with an emphasis on placing its brand culture and values at the heart of the recruitment process. Emphasising its core values of high standards, innovation and openness, it decided to bring recruitment back in-house, and set a key objective for the new programme: to increase the number of candidates attracted through referrals.

RM's recruitment team recognised the vast majority of its target market, and particularly Generation Y school and university leavers, increasingly share online information with one another, and hold entertaining online destinations and interactive content in high regard. So in order to drive a compelling candidate experience, right through from the landing page to job applications, RM selected StepStone's e-recruitment solution to manage the entire hiring process.

Bringing together e-recruitment and viral marketing RM's recruitment team developed a central online creative hub, supported by StepStone's e-recruitment solution. It worked closely with a creative agency to develop a highly engaging online careers portal, www.rmcareers.co.uk, to enable candidates to apply online and gain useful career information. It was essential that it attracted candidates while reflecting RM's values, was easy to navigate and gave candidates a taste of the innovative culture and the exciting work undertaken by employees.

RMCareers enables candidates to:

- 'Chat' with the recruitment team through an instant messaging system, RM Talk

- Get an insight into the world of RM through an interactive video, Virtual World, and find out about working in different areas first-hand from current employees

- Take part in an online challenge which helps RM identify candidates with the right mix of technical understanding and problem solving skills to thrive at RM

- Subscribe to an RSS feed for up-dates on relevant vacancies

Deborah Moore, Head of Recruitment for RM, comments: We direct all candidates to RMCareers, where the focus is on creating a great candidate experience. We needed the e-recruitment piece to link seamlessly with the videos, games and other information, so it would be as easy as possible for visitors, once on the site, to apply. StepStone's solution stood out from the others, as it can handle all aspects of candidate management, while giving the candidates a considerable degree of control.

StepStone's e-recruitment solution allows candidates to apply for vacancies online, or register their interest for future jobs. All correspondence with the candidate is handled via email, and the entire recruitment process - including the initial application, 'self-service' interview scheduling, contracting and induction - is managed through the StepStone platform, enabling RM to almost entirely dispense with paper-based recruitment.

RM's recruitment process also includes online psychometric testing, provided by StepStone's partner SHL. This element, which includes verbal and numerical reasoning as well as personality profiling for management positions, enables RM to quickly identify the most suitable candidates.

Moore explains: Applicants can easily complete a psychometric questionnaire online and the profiles are instantly collated. When we outsourced recruitment, we lost an element of control but now everything is in one place, we can guide candidates through the process and get a more comprehensive profile of their abilities. From this information we can get some insight into how candidates would fit with our organisational culture, but also match them to specific job roles - all before we meet them face-to-face.

A virtual success
This 'viral' approach has helped RM completely transform its approach to recruitment. It now uses RMCareers in candidate marketing, enabling it to increase candidate quality and reduce time to hire while slashing media and agency spend. Since it was launched in 2006, RMCareers has delivered a 60 per cent rise in speculative applications.

Going online enabled us to meet our objectives of making cost savings while increasing the size and quality of our talent pool, says Moore. We're able to offer potential candidates an experience that rivals many of our competitors and the 'hub' has enabled us to streamline the process and strengthen the perception of our employer brand.

Look to the future
Moore concludes: StepStone has proved to be a vital component of RMCareers, and we'd like to extend its capabilities to cover integrated job board advertising and more personalised text messaging. We're also looking to carry out a survey to find out where people look for jobs and what websites they look at most to try and identify where we should focus our efforts. By targeting the right media and combining the right tools and technology, we hope to become even smarter in our ability to attract highly talented individuals to work at RM.