Case Study
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Q&A:
disAbility Living
Reducing time-to-hire
E.
The disAbility Living (DLI) team have reduced their time to hire process from 8 weeks to 4 weeks. Which Expr3ss! features helped you reduce time spent on recruitment tasks?
S.
Using Expr3ss! we've been able to bring that process down to four weeks from our usual eight week process when needed and we can recruit up to 20 odd team members in that time, with our small team.
We do usually prefer to take our time and hire slowly using our 8 week process, however, there are occasions where, say we have a new client coming on board, or a new house that comes online for example and we need to staff that house with support workers fairly quickly, on those occasions we need to speed our process considerably.
Using Expr3ss! we can advertise our roles on both the free job boards and the paid job boards, such as Seek, and manage all of our candidates in one place, without needing to log into multiple platforms, which saves so much time.
With our customised Screening Questions in Expr3ss!, we can accommodate any clients that have specific training or clearance requirements and quickly and easily identify our most suitable candidates for those positions.
We also utilise our Expert Benchmarks in Expr3ss!, which allows us to use our past or current support worker profiles, who we know fit with the DLI values, the way of thinking, the way of working etc, to create our own customised benchmark for any role, to find our ideal candidates.
With Expr3ss! we can quickly and easily filter those candidates, without having to go through each one individually, using the Expert Benchmark to focus on those best fit candidates from the start.
We have our Interview Q&A templates for phone screening set up in Expr3ss! which allows us to phone screen all of our short-listed candidates so quickly and efficiently.
We use the Interview Calendar feature in Expr3ss! to easily book in candidates for interview, without needing to pick up the phone and call them individually.
There is also an SMS feature, so we will send the candidate an email to schedule in their interview and also send them an SMS at the same time, which saves so much time chasing candidates, as a lot of people sometimes forget to check their emails. We can then schedule an SMS reminder for them to book their interview. We do see a lot more candidate action and engagement when we use the SMS reminder feature.
The Essential Referencing in Expr3ss! is also really important to us. We customise our reference templates in Expr3ss! specific to what we need for each role, but also to reflect the values of our organisation, which provides really important insights for our decision making.
It's all very easy to use and so efficient for us. Expr3ss! is like having an extra person in our team.
E.
You mentioned a recent Casual Support Worker position was a perfect example of the reduction in the disAbility Living team's time-to-hire process. Are there specific statistics from that campaign that you can share with us?
S.
Recently we had a recruitment drive where we needed to hire 20 to 25 Support Workers in a really short period of time. We generally expect a lot of applications because DLI has a great reputation amongst Support Workers, as we provide a lot of training and receive really good feedback from this.
From just the one role advertisement we received around 450 applications. Using the tools that Expr3ss! provides our team, we were able to very quickly and efficiently shortlist those candidates, schedule 71 phone interviews using the Interview Calendar and our Interview Question Templates within Expr3ss!, perform another 31 face-to-face interviews and hired 22 ideal candidates, all within that short amount of time. That campaign in particular, we managed with a group of three team members.
1 role advertisement
20+ positions available
450 applications recieved
71 phone interviews
31 face-to-face interviews
22 people hired
S.
When trying to find the right people for our organisation, we are very conscious of not wasting our candidate’s time. All of our steps, applicant communication, interview scheduling, reference checks etc, we do all of this seamlessly using Expr3ss! It's so much easier.
We’re not chasing candidates to book interviews for example. We have our process set up in Expr3ss! and our candidates can easily self-serve and select a time for their interview which is most suitable for them. Our team follows our phone or face-to-face interview process using our Interview Q&A templates which we have set up in Expr3ss!, our team adds all of their notes and feedback on candidates suitability into Expr3ss! which we can refer back to if we need to.
All of these processes make it so much easier for us to progress a candidate to the next step, because we've got everything all in one place.
Our Benchmarks and Screening Questions in Expr3ss! allow us to quickly identify the best fit for the role, a candidate's suitability in terms of clearances and training required for the role and a candidate's overall fit with the organisation.
If I had to undertake this in my old job, before having Expr3ss!, I would be looking at 450 résumés one by one. We don't have time for that. We are an NDIS organisation.
We need to be really smart with our time, with our money, with our budgets and with how we support and serve our clients. So we need to work efficiently and Expr3ss! helps us to do just that.
Reducing staff turnover
E.
You've shared some impressive statistics regarding the reduction of staff turnover in recent years. Can you share these statistics with us, and how does Expr3ss! support you in achieving these results?
S.
The Disability Sector is known to have a high turnover rate and there are a number of factors which contribute to that, such as burnout for example.
In 2024 our turnover rate reduced significantly and is now comparable to the Private Sector, which is unheard of within our disability sector.
We have been able to achieve this reduction in staff turn-over because we use the tools that Expr3ss! provides us to find the right people for our roles faster and hire the right people the first time. It's so much easier to retain our staff when we do it that way.
We find the right person for the role from the get-go and less time is spent on the recruitment process overall because the tools which we use in Expr3ss! have already done the job for us.
Seeing four or five star candidates come through is always exciting for us. We're like, "Oh my goodness, it's a four or five star person, let's focus on them straight away."
Suraya Lavalette
Senior Manager - People and Culture, disAbility Living
Better applicant insights
E.
How does Essential Referencing in Expr3ss! assist in providing you with better insights into applicants?
S.
We get great insights into our candidates because we use Expr3ss! to ask the right questions of our candidates Referees.
We customise our reference check questions specific to the role and to the expectations of our organisation.
Expr3ss! provides our team with suggestions for these questions, there are AI features in Expr3ss! as well, which we utilise in the background, all which give us great suggestions regarding questions to ask the referees and again, saves us time.
The Essential Referencing in Expr3ss! also provides great checks and balances for our team when needing to ensure the information being provided by our Referees is correct and coming from a legitimate source. We have had occasion where the IP comparison feature in Essential References has alerted us to a fraudulent reference which turned out to be correct and we were able to act accordingly. It just provides that extra layer of security and confidence in the information being provided to ensure we are progressing the right candidate for the role.
Onboarding is a breeze
E.
You manage the onboarding process via Expr3ss!Sign/JoinUs! How does this assist your overall recruitment process and what are the benefits enjoyed in terms of time and money saved?
S.
At a previous workplace, we did all of our onboarding documents manually. Once we had made an offer to a candidate we would invite them onsite to complete their onboarding documents in person. This meant an hour of my time spent with the candidate to collect the information, complete their documents and get them up to speed. Then add another hour or two to scan those documents, make copies of these documents and file all of our requirements. So you’re looking at 2-3 hours of one employee's time, per candidate.
With Expr3ss!Sign/JoinUs! Onboarding in Expr3ss!, we have all of our onboarding documents set up as electronically signable documents, ready to be sent to our candidates with the click of a button.
We have our employee agreement included in our onboarding packs, our policies and procedures documents ready for candidates to read and accept and customised templates to suit each of our roles’ requirements.
So literally we select the relevant onboarding pack, email this to the candidate and wait for the system to alert us once completed documents are ready to review. And rather than needing to then scan and file completed documents, I get a system alert when the documents are ready to review, they are already together with the candidate's application. And that’s it! Job done from the click of a button. It’s so easy. Not to mention the time saved chasing candidates for completed documents.
We can send the candidate an SMS reminder should documents need completing and we are notified once completed.
SMS reminders are a key feature in our process which we regularly utilise. They keep our process moving so efficiently.
Knowing who to interview
E.
How has the Interview Priority Stars feature in Expr3ss! helped you prioritise which candidates to interview first?
S.
Using the Interview Priority Stars and our customised Screening Questions for each role, our team can quickly and easily see the top candidates to focus on first, based on our preferences for the role and as an organisation, to hire.
Seeing four or five star candidates come through is always exciting for us. We're like, "Oh my goodness, it's a four or five star person, let's focus on them straight away."
They alert our team to prioritise that candidate because the system is telling us they would be a great fit for our organisation or, be a value add to our organisation based on the criteria DLI has set in Expr3ss! The Interview Priority Stars give us the behavioural insights we want and need and the candidates Screening Question results tell us whether the candidate possesses the skills and experience we need for a particular role.
Being able to filter and easily review this information for each candidate, without having to go into the resume, saves so much time. We still refer to a candidate’s resume to double check some information when needed, but if we receive 400 résumés we don't have time to go through 400 résumés, that will take days. So we can do it in minutes. We trust the information Expr3ss! provides for each candidate, because we’ve followed this process many many times. We still look at our shortlisted candidate’s resume’s, send out a Reference Check from Expr3ss! and undertake a phone screen for those candidates, but the tools in Expr3ss! allow us to lessen the overall time spent on recruiting.
Getting to know candidates before interview
E.
How have the Screening Questions and Video Questions improved your recruitment process?
S.
We use our Screening Questions in Expr3ss! firstly to ensure a candidate has the right credentials for the role, particularly for our Support Worker roles.
Then we will send the candidate a ShowReel Video request so that they can introduce themselves to our team, or we sometimes request a quick Case Study for them to talk about, an incident they may have had to deal with in their employment, and walk us through how they unpacked the situation.
Again, this speeds our process significantly, especially when we have a lot of applications. A ShowReel Video response makes it so much easier for us to understand if a candidate is coming from the right place. We can see their body language, we can hear how they speak and gauge their communication skills, which is very important for our client facing roles in particular.
So our Screening Questions and ShowReel Video Questions in Expr3ss! are another tool that we use to speed and improve our process.
Easy scheduling with Interview Calendar
E.
How has the Interview Calendar feature in Expr3ss! improved your interview scheduling process?
S.
The Interview Calendar is one of my favourite features in Expr3ss! to be honest, purely because of the amount of recruitment we're doing on a mass scale. If we are phone screening 71 candidates there is no way I have time to call them individually, or SMS them individually to book them in for an interview.
I don't have the luxury of having that headcount for recruitment for someone to be on the phone all day just to book candidates in for an interview.
The Interview Calendar in Expr3ss! is self-service, so we create a window with the time our team has available, the candidate selects a date/time which best suits their calendar and we find what fits in our calendar and Expr3ss! does the rest.
The messaging feature in Interview Calendar is something which we use often too. If our team’s available times for interview don't suit a candidate, they can use the messaging feature to let us know and we can work on a time which best suits all parties.
It's such a great little tool, again, coming from old school recruitment back in the day, you would do this manually. We don't have time for that nowadays. We're busy people. We need to get things done quicker.
The Interview Calendar is our little secret weapon
Streamlining the recruitment process
E.
How does the Interview Q&A feature in Expr3ss! assist in streamlining your recruitment process?
S.
We use our Interview Q&A templates in Expr3ss! for our phone screening, we can reference a candidate’s resume if we have requested it as part of the role’s application process, we can see if the candidate has the credentials needed for the role via our Screening Questions and we have the Interview Priority Stars relating to the Expert Role Benchmark we’ve set for each role.
So we have all of the information we need, easily available on one screen to see which candidates meet our criteria for the role and our organisation and which candidates to move to the next stage of our process.
Likewise with the candidates we don’t progress, they remain in our Talent Pool for future roles with our notes which we enter into Expr3ss! for each candidate, as to why they were unsuccessful on that occasion. Perhaps they didn't have enough experience in the industry at that point or they haven't had experience with more complex client needs.
So if that candidate applies for another role, say a year later, we can quickly and easily refer back to their previous application, reference our notes as to why they were unsuccessful and then focus on their new application and how their suitability may have changed since their previous application.
So there is a continuity of the conversation we’ve had previously with the candidate.
It again speeds our process, being able to quickly reference a previous application and it is also a good experience for the candidate to know that we still remember them and their previous interaction with DLI. It's good customer service in a way and ensures that we maintain the standard of DLI from a brand perspective.
Lightening fast customer service
E.
What's your experience with Expr3ss! Customer Service?
S.
The customer service that Expr3ss! provides is really great. Whenever I use the Live Chat in Expr3ss! I'll get one of the team responding to me within minutes.
If my enquiry is a bit more technical, I’ve had such a scenario resolved within the day and I will get a phone call from one of the lovely team members to keep me up to date, get more information if needed and let me know when we have an outcome.
