How National World is embracing hiring efficiency with Jobtrain

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How National World is embracing hiring efficiency with Jobtrain

National World, a leading media company with over 1,000 employees, has been our client since 2020. Their unique approach to recruitment involves two distinct teams: Smarthire, offering RPO services, and their internal recruitment team. After internal team changes in May 2022, they chose a more streamlined version of our applicant tracking system (ATS), which simplified their recruitment process. A key change they also recently implemented was the incorporation of our digital Right-to-Work checks into their process.

Here, Amy Patfield from National World discusses this, alongside their journey so far with Jobtrain and our support service.

What are digital Right-to-Work (RTW) Checks?

Digital Right-to-Work checks are crucial for employers to ensure their new hires and employees are legally allowed to work. The pandemic brought significant changes to how these checks can be carried out, shifting from predominantly in-person to digital verification when new laws were introduced in September 2022.

Verification technology, such as Yoti, plays a crucial role in this context. As one of our partners, Yoti offers Identification Verification Technology (IVT), utilising a blend of artificial intelligence and human review to authenticate documents like passports. This is matched with a biometric selfie provided by the candidate. This efficient process, which takes only 2-3 minutes, ensures compliance and provides employers with a statutory excuse, safeguarding them against potential fines in cases where an employee is found to be working illegally. Here at Jobtrain, we’ve fully integrated these Right-to-Work checks into our ATS, enabling our clients to effortlessly track and document processes with little need to navigate away from the ATS.

The challenges before using digital RTW Checks

Before using integrated digital Right-to-Work checks, National World faced significant challenges. Amy goes on:

“It was a real struggle to get new starters into an office where sometimes there wasn’t an office nearby. The laws changed around Right-to-Work and we couldn’t ask new hires to take the pictures themselves. It became difficult – we had to get the PAs involved to go to an office for a full day just to get someone’s Right-to-Work. It was very difficult. I was thinking I wish we had an online version for Right-to-Work checks and we do now – it’s Yoti.”

Before integrated digital checks, costs escalated too. Amy said: “It would be a PA in the office for a whole day. You’d have to clear those expenses as well.”

The transformation with our ATS

The introduction of the Jobtrain ATS and particularly the digital RTW checks, have revolutionised National World’s recruitment process.

“Now we log on to Yoti. It takes literally seconds and I’ve recently used the bulk uploads as well. We’ve had some requisitions and had 167 to do – it honestly took me 5 minutes” Amy recalls. It’s significantly streamlined their hiring process.

We asked Amy of other examples how the integrated digital checks have streamlined processes:

“We have audits, as does every other company. With Yoti we just go on to the file, it’s already there in a nice document downloaded from Yoti straight away with all the text extracted as well. It’s not the usual blurry pictures because Yoti extracted all the text and it’s got the biometric face match as well.”

Choosing a lighter version of Jobtrain

The decision to switch to a lighter version of our ATS was driven by the desire for simplicity and intuitiveness. After first implementing Jobtrain with many of our features switched on, due to changing circumstances within the organisation they chose to remove some features they no longer required, benefitting their new and updated internal processes.

We take great pride in the adaptability of our Jobtrain ATS, with 90% of it being configurable without requiring any development. This flexibility is particularly beneficial if our clients’ circumstances change. Being highly configurable, our ATS allows for modifications to meet new demands and streamline processes, often with minimal or no additional cost.

Following a restructure within the business, Amy said:

“Internally it’s just two of us now. [Streamlining to a lighter version] helped us to manage it more locally on our own. We do over service our managers a little bit, but it allows us to control them a little bit more.” Amy explains.

Working closely with their Continuous Improvement Consultant, Jules, they customised their ATS to provide a cleaner, more streamlined user experience to meet their needs. On choosing what to strip out (and add in), they also used the flexibility of the ATS to switch on the LinkedIn Jobs Feed.

The benefits of configurability, flexibility and integrations

Our ATS’s flexibility has been instrumental in meeting the unique needs of National World. The configuration has enabled a tailored user experience that meets their specific requirements, enhancing the efficiency of their recruitment.

On the differences it’s made to candidates and the HR team, Amy said: It’s made things easier for the HR team and the managers. We no longer have to email chase them multiple times, so it’s saved a lot of manual admin time.”

Ongoing support and exceeding expectations

The ongoing support from Jules and our support team has been a standout element for National World.

“Yoti is so easy to use and I’m so used to everything I need to get out of Jobtrain. It’s so simple!” Amy notes.

The introduction of Yoti exceeded their expectations, proving to be a game-changer in their hiring process.

On the support they had from their CIC, Jules, when they chose to look at configuring Jobtrain to meet their changing needs, Amy said: “It was really good. We had a call with Jules, our CIC, and went through our existing processes and documented and highlighted things that we should change. Within a few weeks it was sent off to the systems guys at Jobtrain and literally implemented right away. So simple and super easy.”

“Everything is really easy”

“If I need Jules, she’s right there with me. It’s super simple to use. Everything’s really easy and if I do need anything, I can log a ticket and everyone comes back to me straight away. Or just go straight to Jules (Jules you’re amazing!) and she’d come back to me straight away.”