Case Study
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Q&A:
Community Support Inc
Hiring before Expr3ss!
E.
The majority of your hires now come from free sources. How does this compare with your hiring pre-Expr3ss!?
I.
Prior to using Expr3ss! we were using paid job boards.
There were the costs associated with paid advertising of our roles and also it was a much longer recruitment process because we would have been communicating with candidates one by one and sometimes via multiple platforms and job boards.
We didn't have the luxury of corresponding with candidates in bulk as we now do in Expr3ss!
So the difference in our hiring stats is twofold: the financial savings we enjoy through finding our high-quality applicants from free sources, and also the time saving of being able to efficiently communicate with candidates in bulk, all within the one system in Expr3ss!
E.
How much has Expr3ss! reduced your time-to-hire?
I.
Again, it all comes back to the features I have mentioned previously.
Our bulk communication with candidates via Expr3ss!, our customised email templates allowing us to communicate with candidates faster, the integrated Interview Calendar feature in Expr3ss! allowing us to book candidates for interview in bulk and also the Essential Referencing feature in Expr3ss! - being able to make all of these requests of our candidates so easily and receiving this information back in a timely manner.
All of these steps and the time savings that each Expr3ss! feature offers, allows us to achieve these stats and appoint candidates in less than 7 days.
E.
How has the Integrated Interview Calendar in Expr3ss! improved your interview scheduling process?
I.
Massively. From the obvious perspective of the time saved, which I mentioned previously, it also helps from an efficiency perspective by ensuring we do not double book candidates for interviews.
The system is so intuitive there are several steps to prevent double booking.
When you sometimes have multiple colleagues who might be assisting with a role or reviewing the same candidates, a feature like the Expr3ss! Interview Calendar saves time on multiple levels.
E.
How have the Expr3ss! Interview Priority Stars helped you prioritise which candidates to interview first?
I.
The Interview Priority Stars feature within Expr3ss! highlights which candidates we should focus on first.
We might still look further into a candidate with a 1, 2 or 3 star fit to a role and get a better understanding of how their skills and experience could benefit a position, but the Interview Priority Stars allow us to quickly identify our best fit 4 or 5 star applicants for the important behavioural drivers we know will lead to success in our support worker roles in particular.
Again the Expr3ss! Interview Priority Stars point us in the right direction and provide the perfect starting point of which candidates we need to get to fast.
E.
How has the use of the Expr3ss! Checklist Reports supported your hiring efforts?
I.
They are very helpful. I mainly recruit for Support Workers, we’re looking for candidates exhibiting that caring nature and a passion for caring, that we expect of those who will be looking after our clients.
We do sometimes progress those candidates who, whilst they may have a lower star rating for the position, have the skills and experience needed for the role.
It’s funny how often the answers candidates provide or the behavioural tendencies they exhibit, are indicated in their Checklist Report when we check.
Expr3ss! saves us so much time and helps us hire the best fit candidates for our roles and our clients.
Izabela Sweeney
Talent Acquisition Partner, Community Support Inc
The future
E.
What Expr3ss! features are essential in supporting your hiring process in 2025?
I.
The Police Check integration within Expr3ss! is a new addition to our Expr3ss! Process. It is making a big difference in terms of speeding our time-to-hire and ensuring we have all the candidate information needed to progress them to the next stage.
We also use Essential References in Expr3ss! The time saved by being able to request all of this essential information from our candidates and their referees with the click of a button.
The insights Essential References provides us is so useful to our shortlisting process and just speeds our whole process, which benefits both Community Support and our candidates.
E.
What has been your experience with Expr3ss! customer service?
I.
I have been raving about the customer service from Expr3ss! from day one.
When I first started in the recruitment team at Community Support, I was that person reaching out to Expr3ss! on a daily basis with 100 questions a day, as I was trying to get up to speed with both my new role and Expr3ss! as fast as possible.
I cannot thank the Expr3ss! Customer Success team enough for their support during that time in particular, they are all amazing!
If I jumped on Live Chat with a question, I would get an instant reply.
The Expr3ss! team were always there to guide me through a best practice process via Live Chat, pick up the phone and talk me through a step in our process, or they would jump on a virtual meet with me and actually walk me through the process I needed to complete. Really I cannot thank them enough, they were extremely helpful and even as I quickly became familiar with Expr3ss! and had less questions to ask, the team has always been there whenever I have needed anything. Amazing!
Using Expr3ss! features
E.
Which Expr3ss! features do you find the most beneficial?
I.
The integrated Interview Calendar feature in Expr3ss! allows me to easily invite multiple candidates to interview.
We run Assessment Centers monthly and we invite up to 15 candidates at a time, so using the integrated Interview Calendar feature saves me so much time, not having to send invites individually to candidates. I can simply create an event and all of the details will be in the email for our candidates. I then invite multiple candidates at the same time to the event and I receive all responses to my inbox, which keeps everything nice and tidy.
Likewise with the Essential Referencing feature within Expr3ss! we have customised Reference request templates which we have created in Expr3ss!, which are really set and forget.
Again, I can send reference requests to multiple candidates at a time via Expr3ss! and all of the references flow straight back into Expr3ss! once complete, it’s such a time saver.
Also if I am on leave or off sick, my team can easily access this information and continue progressing the candidate through our process, so the whole process just saves so much time.
E.
Which features help you identify high-quality candidates more easily?
I.
Both the Expr3ss! Checklist and our Screening Questions for each role save so much time in identifying our most suitable applicants.
The reports on each candidate’s application which we have available in Expr3ss! provide us with such a detailed insight into a candidate’s personality and drivers.
So we can see straight away which candidates would be most suitable for the role. We still reference the candidate’s resume, regarding experience and work history, but the Expr3ss! Checklist gives us such a valuable insight into the candidate's personality as well.
At Community Support Inc we look for candidates with a passion for helping people, so being able to clearly see these traits via their application in Expr3ss! certainly helps us to know which candidates to focus on first.
E.
How do the features within Expr3ss! support your communication with applicants?
I.
The bulk applicant communication feature within Expr3ss! allows us to keep candidates up to date on the progress of their application with CSI, every step of the way.
Thanks to the many customised email templates we have created within Expr3ss!, keeping our candidates informed of where their application is up to in our recruitment process is so easy. We make sure every candidate receives an acknowledgement of their application, thanking them for taking the time to apply.
Once I have phone screened shortlisted candidates, we follow up with another email thanking them for the chat and providing them with any relevant interview information and the option to book in their interview with us.
We use the bulk applicant communication feature to ensure candidates are notified when they are unsuccessful for a role, whilst letting them know their information will be kept within our Talent Pool in Expr3ss! for any future roles we feel they would be suitable for.
We have email templates customised for any occasion, which allows us to respond to our candidates quicker and keep them informed.
E.
Is there anything else that you would like to share with us?
I.
I just can't imagine not having Expr3ss! When I consider all of the features we have available to give our candidates a great experience and all of the tools Expr3ss! provides our Community Support team to hire more efficiently.
