Case Study
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Recruited on attitudes with no interviews and no CVs read
I received a phone call from one of our department heads asking would there be any possibility that we could hire 75 temp staff within a one week time frame to assist with the influx of early release super enquiries we were expecting from our members. The team would be required to start in April through until the end of July with a possible extension past July.
This all began when the Australian government introduced the early release super scheme in the wake of Covid-19 where people who could access their superannuation early provided they met the criteria. There would be two ways of applications being submitted which would be $10,000 available for withdrawal during the 2019/20 financial year and then another $10,000 which could be withdrawn during the 2021 financial year.
With the incredibly tight time frame we had to work within, we basically had seven days to advertise the roles, do the short-listing and then whatever recruitment process that we wanted to go through in order to get these people onboarded and have them starting the week after the Easter long weekend.
CVs not required - removed unconscious bias - helped look beyond any work history
485
Applicants applied for roles
within 5 days
7 days
To advertise, shortlist, appoint
and onboard 75 people hired
75
Roles filled within 1 week
using Expr3ss!
Our effective streamlined process using Expr3ss!
To start we created an incredibly tailored application form, focusing on requirements such as: Can the applicant start by or could they commit to a specific start date? Can the applicant commit to coming into the office at least for the first 2 weeks of classroom-based training? From there they would be set up to work from home because we couldn’t have these people in the office due to our own Covid-19 restrictions. To achieve this, we had very targeted questions such as: Do you have the required hardware at home from an office perspective? i.e. a keyboard, a computer, a headset etc. Knowing the specifics of what we needed of people from a set up perspective meant this was the first step and that helped us in identifying the candidates who can do the job from a requirements perspective.
Management feedback was unanimous about Cultural Fit
This was our custom checklist to identify those people who would meet some very specific requirements in terms of not only their capabilities which we definitely ask questions about and we utilised the star rating but the first step was identifying the people who can actually do this role given they must perform the role from home.
Some of our “Can-Do” questions: Could they start on the specific date? Could they commit to three months temporary full-time assignment? Were they able to attend on the job training at our Milton office? Were they able to work from home? Did they possess an office chair, a private room or space in the home where they could work with minimal disruptions? Could they supply their own IT hardware such as laptop, desktop, mouse, and keyboard etc?
People who had the right attributes, who had the right skill sets … for our call centres
Then we addressed the skills we were looking for: Did they have previous administration, office management or customer service experience? We weren’t necessarily looking for people who had superannuation experience, more so customer service focused or strong administration skills.
We wanted to identify that these applicants could grasp systems really quickly, adapt to new environments and processes really quickly, as well as having excellent verbal and written communication skills.
So our first step was to determine who ticked all the boxes from a “Can-Do” perspective and Expr3ss! allowed us to see this instantly.
During the one-week period in which we advertised we received 485 applications within five days. Expr3ss! allowed us to see which candidates fit the “Can Do”, then we moved on to the “Will Do” via the interview stars. I toggled between two benchmarks in the back end, the first being inbound call centre, but more importantly we were looking for people who had customer service experience, so we also utilised the customer service and account clerks’ benchmarks.
No interviews
We didn’t have the luxury of going through a really complicated recruitment process, we had 75 roles to fill within a one week deadline. We wanted to make sure that we were selecting the right people, we wanted clear communication with the applicants and we wanted to get them onboarded quickly and efficiently and Expr3ss! allowed us to do that.
Contact Expr3ss! for details of the Resourcing Specialist from the HR & Recruitment Team
We were seeking very specific characteristics in these applicants given the sensitivity of the roles they would be performing; Accountability - someone who takes responsibility and acts correctly, also being concerned, feeling responsible and someone understanding / wanting to connect. Because key to this role was that the majority of people who would be applying for early release superannuation were likely to be experiencing some sort of financial stress, therefore we needed these applicants to be able to identify with what these customers might be going through.
Accountability - someone who takes responsibility and acts correctly, also being concerned, feeling responsible and someone understanding / wanting to connect
One of the things that worked really well for us was that we mainly opened up applications to current employees, their families, their friends and we also opened it up to one of our corporate partners, Virgin in Brisbane, who had just let many of their staff go. In doing this, the majority of people that we actually onboarded had recently lost jobs themselves and therefore they were able to really relate to the customers they would be speaking with and interacting with them on compassionate grounds. We weren’t looking for accuracy and speed for this team, even though those qualities are important to us. We wanted strong connection tendencies, applicants who sought to connect with other people and the team around them because they would have to rely on each other to get through both the training that we put them through as well as the ongoing requirements of guiding customers who are going through financial stress.
Having narrowed down those applicants which ticked all of the boxes from a “Can-Do” and “Will-Do” perspective, I then reached out to those people that were right on the money in terms of salary expectations. Given the small time-frame I had, I didn’t have the time to negotiate salary with applicants. I then referenced their employment history, although we weren’t necessarily just saying yes to people who had customer service, more importantly we were looking outside of square when it came to selecting applicants with customer service skills, experience or behavioural strengths.
In short, we hired 75 people within 1 week using this system, we did not interview a single person
One of the applicants for example whom we onboarded through this process had been a Brisbane City bus driver for 20 years, we also hired an ex pilot from Virgin. A great result from our process was we didn’t select the traditional people that we would look for in an admin / call centre role. We were really looking for people who had the right attributes, who had the right skill sets in terms of their ability to do the job from home and could make those commitments to the business. What we’ve found this has highlighted to many in our business is that it is never too late to learn something new, because on this occasion we were not onboarding the traditional “young go-getters” we would usually recruit for our call centres.
Bias removed
Ensuring a diverse selection
of staff is appointed
Pinpoints the top 5 candidates with the right skills and cultural fit
41
Targeted screening questions used to rank applicant’s “Can Do” skills
Achieving diversity with Expr3ss!
Something that the business has really commented on is how we were able to identify and hire some really fantastic people into our business with non-traditional backgrounds that we may not have necessarily short-listed in the past. These included applicants with backgrounds as engineers, construction workers, beauty therapists etc.
This was really thinking outside of the square of us and Expr3ss! allowed us to do that without introducing any unnecessary bias. It was all about who fits the “Can-Do”, who fits the “Will-Do” and from there I would reference their employment history to see whether there was experience there to align with what we were looking for.
When I had to choose between an applicant who had just finished high school and therefore never had a job before, versus someone with 15 or 16 years working in administration, I would prioritise that person first. In short, we hired 75 people within 1 week using this system, we did not interview a single person. We made offers of employment based purely on the results Expr3ss! provided us and once they accepted our offer, we then picked up the phone and spoke with the applicant.
Management Challenge - hire 75 temp staff in 7 days - 1 Full-time & 1 Part-time In-house Recruiters
This could have been an indication of what was happening in the job market at the time as we were obviously offering a level of security for people during a time of immense uncertainty, however the information we’re able to obtain from Exp3ss! really helped us to quickly identify whose application we needed to focus our time on.
In the past when we’ve had these types of requirements, we would go straight to a recruitment agency or recruitment agency partner. We would tell them how many people we needed to start with a particular time-frame, usually around 3-4 weeks in advance. They would do the initial vetting and then send us the resumes of those applicants they thought were best suited.
Avoided using a recruitment agency or recruitment agency partner
On this occasion, we wanted to make sure that we were tapping into our companies community and their families, because we knew so many people have been impacted by Covid-19, many having lost their jobs. So we decided to apply an approach which brought it all in house because I had a level of confidence from my earlier work that we could get all of the information that we needed from within Expr3ss! that would help us make a really quick decision.
I found this to be one of my best employment opportunities in my working life and I’m a mature age worker so I’ve had a variety of experience. The team and support have been outstanding. The environment is excellent to work in and I’ve enjoyed my interaction with both the members and the staff. I’ve had some wonderful experiences and fantastic compliments along the way from our members and staff, and I’ll be watching out for other opportunities to work here when they come up.
Applicant testimonial
Later, I wanted to sense-check whether the information Expr3ss! had provided us during the recruitment process translated across to being the reality in the workplace, so I reached out to a couple of the team leaders including our head of customer interactions. There was a real sense of disbelief that we were able to hit the nail on the head when it came to achieving the right cultural fit so well across all of these applicants.
And this really was demonstrated in some of the statistics we’ve seen since, where we received a customer service rating of 86% through the pandemic and 96% of our members were paid their money from an early release within three to five days.
Contracts extended for many
The thing our management team have all commented on is how we were able to break down the barriers of traditional recruitment. All of the applicants we hired for this team were unanimous that member outcomes were at the foresight of what we were aiming to achieve. Because they’re all really aligned from a personal attributes perspective, they really understood the goal that we were trying to achieve as a team, which was fantastic. We gave them a level of empowerment to get the job done and we had been able to identify and select a team which collectively had that level of maturity as well as the connectedness with our members in order to deliver what we were asking of them.
Able to hit the nail on the head when it came to achieving the right cultural fit so well across all these applicants
So these new hires came on board, had three days classroom based training, another seven days of supervised work in the office with a people leader to support them and then we sent them home to begin taking enquiries from our members.
The benefits of recruiting in house with Expr3ss!
We outsource our entire call centre recruitment process with the exception of the final interview. One of our ongoing issues with the recruitment agency which we have said time and time again is that we were not looking for the traditional call centre/customer service applicant. Our call centre is very different in that we’re not driven based on the usual kind of metrics that traditionally apply to centre positions. However generally they could never grasp this concept.
No longer outsource call centre hiring
The reason we have outsourced our call centre recruitment in the past is the agency will receive over 1000 applications and we have a really small recruitment team, it’s only myself and my colleague Danni who works part time. We just didn’t think we had the capacity to effectively process that volume of applications. We’ve realised from this experience that we do have those tools available to us within Expr3ss! and we can actually manage that volume internally in a very efficient process.
3 Benchmarks Used; Inbound Call Centre + Customer Service + Account Clerk
This process has opened many eyes within our management team to the notion that seeing someone’s employment history can unconsciously influence you as to whether you think someone is going to be suitable for your role. We had a lot of the candidates we onboarded on this occasion say “thank you so much for looking past my employment history and focusing more on what my capabilities are as opposed to the skill set that I bring”.
One candidate said following the completion of her term, “I found this to be one of my best employment opportunities in my working life and I’m a mature age worker so I’ve had a variety of experience. The team and support have been outstanding. The environment is excellent to work in and I’ve enjoyed my interaction with both the members and the staff. I’ve had some wonderful experiences and fantastic compliments along the way from our members and staff and I’ll be watching out for other opportunities to work here when they come up”.
Able to identify and select a team which collectively had that level of maturity … in order to deliver what we were asking of them
We’ve also been able to extend the contracts of quite a number of these candidates by moving them into different areas of the business which need additional support. A couple of these team members have moved into our financial crimes department where they now work to identify potentially fraudulent transactions.
Adds value to business from a cultural perspective
I think if we as an organisation wish to be far more inclusive and diverse in the type of people that we’re bringing into the workplace, having a tool such as Expr3ss! will provide that unbiased opportunity to really identify people who tick the boxes from a skills perspective, but more importantly will be able to add value to the business from a cultural perspective as opposed to just being culturally aligned.
Speed to hire with Expr3ss! Benchmarks
We didn’t have the luxury of going through a really complicated recruitment process, we had 75 roles to fill within a one week deadline. We wanted to make sure that we were selecting the right people, we wanted clear communication with the applicants and we wanted to get them onboarded quickly and efficiently and Expr3ss! allowed us to do that.
We knew the skills we were looking for from a checklist perspective. We knew the personality traits we were looking for specific to this role and to be honest, it didn’t require a lot of effort on our part because we used the standard benchmarks that are available within Expr3ss! We didn’t have to invest in any additional tools, the base model if you will, of Expr3ss! allowed us to sort through those applicants and identify our best quality candidates.
Free integrated video for interviews saves us hours
Being able to turn around such a large process, identify our quality applicants from such a large candidate pool and get people onboarded in such a short period of time is something I would not have been able to achieve without the use of Expr3ss!
How were these roles advertised?
We advertised internally via our corporate website, we also created a custom tag to identify those people who are applying from our corporate partner in Virgin Australia and we encouraged our employees to share the opportunity through their social networks such as Linkedin and Facebook. In addition to our “traditional” avenues such as Indeed and Jora we really tapped into non-traditional networks and something important to consider here is, this whole exercise didn’t actually cost the business.
Smart Shortlist™ pinpoints Top 5 applicants
We didn’t even interview any of these applicants prior to sending out offers of employment. Given the tight time-frame and the fact we are an internal recruitment team of 2 people, we trusted in the Expr3ss! Checklist™ and the Smart Shortlist™.
The time-frame
We started advertising on the 3rd of April, expressions of interest closed on the 8th of April and we had our most suitable applicants identified and offers of employment sent out by the 9th and 10th of April. All of this was essentially coordinated in the space of the Easter Long Weekend.
Provides so many resources and insights to assist managers in making a decision in terms of which applicants they should focus on during the recruitment process
Resources within Expr3ss!
The big sell for getting Expr3ss! across the line with management was that not only was it far cheaper than our previous candidate management system but it also provides so many resources and insights to assist managers in making a decision in terms of which applicants they should focus on during the recruitment process.
All of the features we need are built in, too. The Video Interview feature for example saves us hours by allowing us to identify those applicants who look good on paper as opposed to those who can actually deliver when it comes to the requirements of the role. It’s also such a useful tool when it comes to educating candidates regarding the requirements of the business as well.
Application prompts applicants to think and be motivated to apply
Applicants invested in the Expr3ss! application process
We don’t want to be the potential employer that someone has quickly flipped their resume to on their commute home in the afternoon. We don’t want to make it too hard that people lose interest in applying certainly, but we also don’t want to make it that easy that we’re just one of 20 roles someone has applied to through Seek. We ideally want applicants who have a vested interest in applying for a role, but also a vested interest in the actual role. The application process via Expr3ss! prompts applicants to really think about their motivation for applying to the role and their skill sets when it comes to our use of “Can-Do” questions for example.
Expr3ss! continues to surpass our expectations
By asking a candidate questions such as “will to be able to demonstrate said skill set”, suddenly this is no longer simply their opinion, this is now information which is quantifiable via later assessment, so applicants are far more honest when we change the proposition of our questions.
The system has been able to achieve results that not even we foresaw when we signed up in 2018, it’s been an amazing journey so far with Expr3ss! and continues to surpass our expectations.
