e-recruitment solution for Oxfordshire County Council

Oxfordshire County Council has selected the Recruit recruitment management solution from Abacus e-Media.

An invitation to tender for the supply of an e-recruitment solution resulted in several responses, but according to Steve Munn, Head of Human Resources & Organisational Development: ìOnly two of the potential suppliers understood exactly what we were looking for. Many of the others tried to sell us a complete HR solution, which was irrelevant given that we already have SAP for this.î

The contract was awarded to Abacus e-Media based on the companyís proposed speed of implementation, pricing and their track record in the supply of recruitment solutions to local government.

The e-recruitment system for Oxfordshire County Council was a core element in the Councilís move to a shared services centre for all HR and support services. This had originally been put in place in 2006 with a major aim being the centralised recruitment of all the Councilís 20,000 staff. Since 2006, prior to the implementation of Recruit, the Council had used an in-house developed system which allowed candidates to apply online but had limited back office and reporting functionality.

Oxfordshire County Councilís Recruit system went live in October 2007, and since then the number of online applications received has grown steadily to 86% in March 2008. About eight hundred users, including Council managers and schools, are able to access the system to keep track of the management of their vacancies and candidates.

Oxfordshire County Council now uses Recruit to manage the entire recruitment process from online advertising, applications, production and despatch of letters, shortlisting, right through to the production of contracts and management reporting. Since December 2007, the system has been used to manage 993 jobs.

Grainne Darnton, Recruitment Manager, Oxfordshire County Council: ìRecruit has contributed significantly towards streamlining our recruitment workflow. We now have significantly fewer people doing the same amount of recruitment work than before the installation of Recruit.

ìInstead of having to distribute hard copies of applications to managers, they are now able to view the entire process online and better understand the stages we have to go through. In addition, we are able to use the data that applicants submit online for other purposes, such as mail merging, which saves time and duplication of effort.

ìWe have found Recruit to be a very cost effective recruitment management solution, which has also been easy to understand and easy to use.î