Online Recruitment Helps Carphone Warehouse

Overview
Carphone Warehouse is Europe’s leading independent retailer of mobile phones and services, with over 1,400 stores in 10 countries. In the highly competitive mobile communications market, Carphone Warehouse must attract and retain the best talent to maintain excellent customer satisfaction levels. To help achieve this, Carphone Warehouse is using Jobpartnersí ActiveRecruiter to manage its entire recruitment process in the UK and enhance its employer brand.

An outdated, slow recruitment system
Carphone Warehouse aims to treat potential candidates with the same commitment to excellence as it provides its external customers. A streamlined recruitment process is therefore essential to ensure candidates are dealt with efficiently and quickly. Carphone Warehouse used to manage recruitment via paper and email, however this was a slow process and the company found that it could not get back to candidates quickly enough. Furthermore the company had no view of service level agreements or time to hire.

ìWith records kept on spreadsheets we felt our recruitment system was outdated, and with around 1000 CVs per month coming in for the retail division alone, processing applications efficiently was a real challenge,î explained Pete Feldman, Head of HR Shared Services at Carphone Warehouse. ìThe administration involved was also very time consuming and took up a lot of the HR teamís time. Valuable time was being spent on paper pushing rather than focusing on strategic issues.î

Carphone Warehouse recognised that if candidates were to be treated in the same way as customers, a review of its sourcing process was critical. The candidate experience needed to be improved at every stage from the moment a potential employee sent in a CV right through to the interview stage. The company also wanted to make it easier to apply for vacancies and ensure job descriptions were visible on its website.

With these objectives in mind, Carphone Warehouse decided to move its recruitment online. A review of the key e-recruitment solutions on the market led to the decision to implement Jobpartnersí ActiveRecruiter. ActiveRecruiter has been designed to manage the entire recruitment process and support internal mobility.

ìOf all the e-recruitment solutions available, ActiveRecruiter represented the best value for money, and this still stands true,î commented Pete Feldman. ìThe company also had a real understanding of our need to align recruitment to the candidate experience.î

A personalised e-recruitment solution
Following a smooth implementation process, ActiveRecruiter was rolled out across the company in the UK. The HR team from each area of the business now uses ActiveRecruiter to manage the recruitment process and source for positions which vary from retail to contact centre to head office to technology roles.

Jobpartners and Carphone Warehouse worked closely together to ensure ActiveRecruiter was tailored to meet Carphone Warehouseís specific requirements.

ìWe were able to talk to the consultants at Jobpartners throughout the implementation process to ensure that the solution was completely configured to our needs,î commented Pete Feldman. ìWe also had a dedicated technical consultant from Jobpartners during implementation to ensure that everything went smoothly.î

A positive candidate experience and improved employer brand
By moving recruitment online, Carphone Warehouse has greatly improved the management and efficiency of its recruitment process, and has reduced time to hire.

ìOur recruitment cycle is now much slicker and more consistent across the company,î commented Ian Boyton, Recruitment Marketing Manager at Carphone Warehouse. ìApplying for a job at Carphone Warehouse is much quicker and easier than before. We are able to respond to candidates very quickly and have an automated response system in place. This has helped to enhance our employer brand and ensure we treat potential employees with the same emphasis on excellence that we commit to customers. This can only help us to attract and retain the best talent in the industry.î

In addition, the implementation of ActiveRecruiter has helped to make the administration associated with processing applications much more efficient. This means the Carphone Warehouse HR teams can spend more time dealing with strategic issues.

Greater internal mobility
With a direct link from the Carphone Warehouse intranet to ActiveRecruiter, it is easy for current employees to apply for vacancies within the company. ActiveRecruiter enables internal candidates to create their own profiles and notifies them of new positions matching their criteria. They can also search for positions based on their criteria, apply for multiple positions and monitor the progress of their applications online. In addition, the Carphone Warehouse HR teams can perform searches for internal candidates who best match the profiles of vacant positions.

The ActiveRecruiter Candidate Gateway has been designed in such a way as to ensure maximum accessibility, even from simple store terminals. This means retail employees are able to search and apply for jobs when they have a few minutes to spare whilst in-store.

ìEncouraging internal mobility is very important for nurturing and retaining employees,î commented Ian Boyton. ìActiveRecruiter helps our employees to be proactive about their career with Carphone Warehouse and has made it much easier for them to apply for a job. It is also much easier for HR to identify suitable internal talent.î

Jobpartners has implemented its Single Sign On facility for Carphone Warehouse internal candidates. This means that when an employee logs into the company intranet and clicks on the recruitment link, they are automatically logged into their account on the ActiveRecruiter Candidate Gateway without having to input their passwords and user ID. This helps to save time and ensures ease-of-use as well as avoiding the hassle of having to remember another user name and password.

Improved market visibility
As well as advertising positions with job profiles on the Carphone Warehouse website, the company can also post vacancies on job-boards. Using ActiveRecruiter, vacancies can be posted across multiple sites quickly and easily.

ìWith improved visibility on the internet we have a wider presence on the market. We also have quicker access to the web community which means responses to vacancies are faster,î commented Ian Boyton.

ActiveRecruiter has also enabled Carphone Warehouse to reduce its reliance on recruitment agencies and increase the efficiency of dealing with the agencies it still works with.

The Future
Due to the benefits ActiveRecruiter has brought Carphone Warehouse, the company has continued to use the solution to manage its recruitment process.

ìOur experience to date with e-recruitment has been very positive. And the great support Jobpartners has provided coupled with its commitment to research and development and bringing out new, innovative versions of ActiveRecruiter means we will continue to use the tool,î commented Ian Boyton.