How Leigh Academies Trust recruits with Jobtrain

Education

How Leigh Academies Trust recruits with Jobtrain

About Leigh Academies Trust

Leigh Academies Trust is a non-profit making charitable company limited, based in Strood, Medway. The Trust exists to support and assist schools to build upon their existing strengths and to help them achieve rapid educational transformation. It has significant experience in running schools, and today includes both sponsored academies and schools which have chosen to convert to Academy status.

We first met Leigh Academies Trust at a CIPD exhibition. Following consultation, we were delighted to be chosen as Leigh Academies Trust’s applicant tracking system provider. With approximately 1,000 staff, Leigh Academies Trust comprises of 32 academies and educates around 15,000 students.

Before implementing an ATS system

Schools managed recruitment with support from central HR
Finance had to approve recruitment expenditure in a slow, offline process
HR managed advertising and recruitment agencies and manually tracked offline
The selection process varied and encompassed different stages which were inconsistent and hard to track
Contracts had many variations and were time-consuming to set up

How Leigh Academies Trust recruits with Jobtrain

The recruitment and HR team at Leigh Academies Trust provide a service to 29 separate academies, each with their own needs and identity. To balance the need for a corporate consistency and individual identity, their Jobtrain candidate portal is branded in line with their corporate careers site, but with each job advertised representing the logo of the academy in which the job is based.

Aims & Objectives of Implementing Jobtrain

Support their growing schools and recruitment needs
Build long term talent pools
Balance autonomy within individual schools but with the consistency of process and standards across the trust
Reduce administration

Job approval online: quicker, controlled and tracked, less admin time
Quick to set up new vacancies: Schools can create vacancies quickly and consistently by using ready-made templates: quicker, less admin time, more consistency
Vacancy adverts are posted automatically to social media / Indeed / job boards: quicker, less admin time
Centrally controlled application forms: consistent, robust, fit for purpose, flexible (built by HR without the need for Jobtrain support)
Online candidate management: securely stored, central and local access, tracked, consistent, ease of communication (email and SMS), automated status changes and emails reducing admin time
Automated job alert service to candidates and conversely automated candidate alert service for school / HR Users, plus flexible talent pooling options
Online offer and onboarding: automated construction of electronic offer packs, shared and accessed with candidates electronically: secure, trackable, quicker, reduces admin time

Conclusion

Leigh Academies Trust has developed a really effective partnership with Jobtrain, embracing its capabilities and pioneering the change to online recruitment within their schools. The applicant tracking solution has proved popular with client users and candidates, reduced administration, increased spend and controlled costs, ultimately supporting scalability of recruitment as the Trust has expanded from 8 to 29 schools since implementing Jobtrain.