Superdrug moves recruitment online

Jobpartners, the European company of software solutions dedicated to the PRM (People Relationship Management) market, today announced that Superdrug has signed up ActiveRecruiter, Jobpartnersí online recruitment solution, to optimise its recruitment process. As well as reducing the admin associated with processing CVs, Superdrug anticipates that the solution will help attract and retain candidates and enhance the companyís employer brand. The decision was made to move recruitment online following a five month recruitment campaign, which left the company inundated with CVs.

As a leading beauty and health retailer, Superdrug is continually searching for hot talent, explained Kate Parkes, HR Manager at Superdrug. At the end of 2004 we ran several job-board campaigns to help us fill vacancies across the UK. We had a fantastic response with an average of around 2000 CVs per month, but since we administered applications at that time using spreadsheets and email, processing this amount of CVs was hugely time-consuming particularly for the field recruiters. It soon became clear that we needed a tool to help us streamline our recruitment process and reduce the burden of the admin - this led to the decision to implement ActiveRecruiter.

ActiveRecruiter is currently being used by Superdrugís regional HR and Head Office HR teams across the UK to fill vacancies for store managers, assistant store managers and pharmacists. The company has just started using ActiveRecruiter to find candidates for Head Office roles and has already had results.

Although ActiveRecruiter has only recently been implemented, Superdrug is already benefiting from the solution.

Our recruitment process is evolving to become considerably quicker and more efficient than before, commented Kate Parkes. Prior to implementing ActiveRecruiter we were always a bit nervous about placing recruitment adverts online as we couldnít handle huge numbers of CVs. We can now advertise on job boards with confidence as we know we can deal with applications efficiently. Faster response times together with greater consistency in handling CVs will help us to meet our objective of improving the Superdrug employer brand and attract, hire and retain talented people.

ActiveRecruiter provides Superdrug with a single source for all of its recruitment information. The company ultimately aims to be able to monitor its recruitment performance against the companyís Key Performance Indicators. Superdrug intends to pull off reports on the number of CVs it receives against the number of job offers it makes - a process which will be carried out via ActiveRecruiter. The company is also about to use the solution to manage the CVs it receives via its recruitment agency preferred suppliers.

Hire Strategies, a retail consulting company focused on helping retailers maximise their online recruitment activities, was engaged by Superdrug to manage the procurement process and ongoing candidate attraction campaigns. Hire Strategies worked closely with Superdrug and reviewed the offerings of nine software providers and identified Jobpartnersí ActiveRecruiter as the best online recruitment solution to meet Superdrugís needs.

Without the help and guidance from Hire Strategies, Iím sure weíd still be relying on spreadsheets and email, commented Kate Parkes. Utilising their knowledge and experience of both retail and internet recruitment, we have been able to get results more cost effectively without having to learn the entire process on our own.

ActiveRecruiter has now been set-up to manage the entire sourcing process more effectively and quickly resulting in better people relationship management.