Transforming recruitment: How Beamish Museum streamlined hiring with our ATS

Charity and Not for Profit

Transforming recruitment: How Beamish Museum streamlined hiring with our ATS

Beamish, The Living Museum of the North, is known for its immersive, living museum experience and witty Tiktok videos. Based in North East England, the museum embarked on a transformative journey by implementing our applicant tracking system (ATS) in February 2024.

With a workforce of over 500 employees and 350 volunteers, Beamish Museum was looking to streamline its recruitment process, support volume seasonal hiring and enhance Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) initiatives. Speaking with Michelle Suddes, People and Culture Manager and Susan Birss, People and Culture Assistant, we delved into the impact our ATS has had on Beamish Museum’s recruitment strategy, what it was like to implement its first ATS and how it’s delivered on its initial objectives.

Moving from paper to streamlined processes

Before implementing our Jobtrain ATS, Beamish Museum’s recruitment process was, as Michelle put it, “mounds of paper…a long-winded, time-consuming process with no digital element.” Shortlisting relied on paper applications physically being shared with the members of the shortlisting panel, which often lengthened the shortlisting process.

“The practical side of shortlisting was quite a nightmare,” Michelle recalled, adding that because hard copies of applications had to be physically circulated it led to a slow process, impacting recruitment timelines.

Since implementing Jobtrain and bringing recruitment online, Beamish Museum has centralised and streamlined its recruitment processes. The museum reduced its reliance on paper and now embraces having all applications accessible.

“Everything’s in one place and you can access things so much easier. It’s brilliant!” Michelle shared, underscoring how this shift has also benefitted Beamish Museum’s environmental goals by reducing paper usage and postage.

Implementation, transformation and support

Moving to a fully digital and automated ATS from a manual and paper process was initially daunting for the Beamish Museum People and Culture Team. For Susan, who had managed only traditional recruitment methods for years, she said: “It was a huge change moving from what I’d done for years to something brand new and digital”.

However, those initial worries quickly faded. The team welcomed how customisable and intuitive our ATS is, noting that “once you get your head around it, it’s so smooth and easy.”

They also valued our implementation support, noting how our implementation team made sure the system “mirrors exactly what we want.”

Describing the implementation process as “seamless,” Michelle praised our “client-focused approach” throughout the journey. She said: “Right from the beginning, you’ve had a client focused approach.”

She highlighted the support and guidance provided by our implementation team during the design and workflow setup, saying it was “detailed and challenged us when necessary [rather than just sticking to the same old processes], giving us feedback on how others have implemented Jobtrain.”

Regarding the ongoing support, “it’s been a supported journey” Michelle said.

Speaking about some of the impacts of Jobtrain, Michelle shared “when there’s a high volume of applications, it just makes it much easier…hiring managers can manage shortlisting much better, rather than waiting for the closing date.” By automating parts of the process and allowing hiring managers direct involvement, our ATS has enabled Beamish Museum to respond more flexibly, especially when its seasonal recruitment campaigns begin in January.

For all of our Jobtrain clients, implementation, training and ongoing support is included as standard.

Onboarding, ED&I and candidate experience

Now recruitment is centralised online, Beamish Museum has expanded its outreach to attract a more diverse pool of candidates. Michelle noted that since adopting Jobtrain, “we now have time to think about different roles and improvements.” It’s given the team the time to think about how it hires and aligns with its ED&I goals, further supported by our built-in compliance and reporting features.

Talking about bringing onboarding into Jobtrain, Susan said “with Jobtrain’s onboarding everything’s in one place. We can just upload documents and put it in our staff file rather than having lots of paper to scan and save in different folders.”

Beamish Museum’s onboarding process involves different departments bringing new hires in. Michelle shared “Susan deals with the recruitment side, we have someone else that’s involved in the onboarding and then we have a training and development team who manage new starters from an induction point of view. Having Jobtrain has streamlined and coordinated all that information between colleagues within the People & Culture Team.”

Michelle explained “our onboarding process is quite lengthy” so our Welcome Hub feature has been a game-changer for them. Beamish Museum’s Welcome Hub centralises information for new hires, helping them feel informed, engaged and confident before their first day.

What’s next?

Beamish Museum has ambitious goals for the next 12 months, focusing on maximising its reporting capabilities and fine-tuning its front-of-house recruitment to ensure it’s as candidate-friendly as possible. With our flexible ATS and continued support, Beamish Museum is confident in building on progress to keep refining and improving how it recruits.

We asked Michelle and Susan how they’d describe our ATS and the support we offer in three words. They chose:

Sophisticated.
Supportive.
Efficient.

A fitting testament to the positive impact of our ATS on Beamish Museum’s recruitment journey!