Bellrock and Jobtrain – one year on for a rapidly growing company

Professional Services

Bellrock and Jobtrain – one year on for a rapidly growing company

We chatted with Viktorija Sheriff, the Internal Talent Resourcing Manager at Bellrock, about their experience using our Jobtrain applicant tracking system. Growing from 600 employees to 1700 in just two years, Bellrock needed an ATS (Applicant Tracking System) partner that would support that growth.

They went live with Jobtrain in August 2022. One year on, we’re excited about what they’ve told us about their recruitment transformation!

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Why did you start looking for a new ATS?

Prior to Jobtrain, we didn’t track and report on the recruitment services we used across the business. We were growing rapidly so we needed to get a handle of our hiring and our strategy moving forwards. We were using many external suppliers and recruitment agencies and wanted to bring it all under our control and centralise everything.

Jobtrain is Bellrock’s first applicant tracking system. Previously, we didn’t see the need for one, but after growing from 600 employees to 1700 in the space of 2 years, we saw that we needed to formalise recruitment to be more cost-efficient and keep track of everything! We began looking for recruitment solutions using comparison sites. When we saw Jobtrain in action, we knew it could do everything we needed and more!

Before Jobtrain, you relied on recruitment agencies – how was that?

We over-relied on recruitment agencies. Most roles were outsourced to agencies because we were only a recruitment team of one! Without an ATS in place to gather the necessary data, it was difficult to prove to the board that we needed to expand our central recruitment team!

Before Jobtrain, we spent too much on recruitment. Using Jobtrain has slashed our spend on recruitment agencies alone by 75%!

We don’t need to rely on agencies anymore and we’ve been able to re-invest some of the cost savings into expanding our central team too. We’ve become a well-oiled machine and we’re always looking for new ways to improve. Using Jobtrain has freed up time to work at a more strategic level, looking at how we can source the right talent to improve the business.

Were there any must-haves involved in your decision to choose Jobtrain as your ATS supplier?

It had to be intuitive and user-friendly. We’re a fast-paced business so we needed something easy for hiring managers to navigate without too much training. It was especially important as Hiring Managers may only need to log-in to Jobtrain once every few months when they’re hiring.

As soon as we saw your ATS, we knew Jobtrain would exceed our criteria and expectations.

Read about JT Mobile – our hiring manager friendly mobile app.

How was the implementation process?

The implementation team were brilliant! Vicki – our implementation manager – was always available when we had questions. She and the team really went the extra mile.

I’d recommend to other companies that, when they’re looking at buying an ATS, do your research. One of the challenges we ran into was a belief that every ATS is the same. It’s just technology!

But Jobtrain showed us that an ATS can be more than just technology – it’s the support and the possibilities of it growing alongside us.

How have you found the reporting functionality?

It’s made a massive difference. The reports help us drill into areas like salary range, candidate-types and given us numbers and data we wouldn’t have dreamed of before.

Previously, we’d had Hiring Managers asking how many candidates have applied for a role and it would be a manual task to sift through all the information to find the answer. Now, we have that information at our fingertips, accessible in seconds. Jobtrain gives us full visibility of what’s coming in and coming out, and it means we can be more strategic.

What new strategies are you implementing?

Being able to report on every area is making an enormous difference.

We can now report on diversity, specifically where candidates come from, and it helps us plan ways to open our candidate funnels. Jobtrain has helped us form a new strategy that we’re really proud of, where we work with charities to target underrepresented candidate populations.

In fact, we’re already working with one called the Inspiring Leadership Foundation – focussed on women coming back to work after experiencing domestic abuse. Because we can now track those candidates through Jobtrain, we can ensure our Hiring Managers have a special awareness of their circumstances and that they get the opportunity for interview. It can all be logged and tracked in Jobtrain and we can keep leading initiatives like these because the reporting functionality lets us monitor it and have full traceability!

How has the candidate experience improved?

We’re using a careers website which helps explain our very technical business in a more accessible way.

The potential of the careers website has made us think about the recalibration of our Employee Value Proposition (EVP). We reviewed the story we tell the world and to our candidates and then undertook various exercises to improve it. We reviewed and improved several areas such as increasing our annual leave to 31 days plus bank holidays, offering an improved pension scheme and enhanced our maternity/paternity leave package.

We went from a small business to suddenly exploding with growth – and Jobtrain has really aided in all that strategic work.

What’s exceeded your expectations?

Jobtrain is incredibly configurable. We can change so much in the system without any interaction or help needed from you – helping us stay agile. I’ve personally worked with quite a lot of ATS’s in the past, so I have a lot to compare, but Jobtrain has absolutely exceeded our expectations. The system constantly flows well without any problems.

The reporting data is incredibly easy to access and understand for both the recruitment team and Hiring Managers.

Access to the helpdesk portal and user guides are also incredibly helpful for more complex use or if you’re looking at an area of the system you’ve not used for a while. I love how hands-off it is, but when we do have questions, the support team are on hand immediately and are absolutely brilliant.

About Bellrock Group

With 1700 employees across 75 sites, Bellrock is focussed on helping organisations to manage their buildings and facilities more efficiently and effectively, using a combination of technology, data and the industry experience of brilliant people.