E-recruitment project at Derbyshire

Derbyshire County Council

Derbyshire County Council implemented Phase I of their e-recruitment project in September 2004 based on Abacus’ Recruit product, and achieved a number of significant benefits:

• 20,000 users registered on the system, 55% of all applications submitted were done online during the first nine months of system use. This number has continued to rise.
• There were over 226,000 visits to the new jobs website by over 93,000 visitors within the first nine months.
• Net savings in staffing efficiencies were over £90,000 per annum.
• Printing and stationery costs were also reduced by approximately £100,000 year on year arising from a 50% reduction in number of job packs requested in hard copy format.

The website and call centre are fully integrated within the Council’s recruitment process: job adverts are placed directly on the web site, the weekly job sheet is automatically produced and recruitment analysis tools (e.g. who is applying, demographics, what they are applying for, etc.) are being used extensively.

The Partnership project

Following the success of Recruit at county level, the Council launched an innovative e-recruitment solution for a number of partner organisations to provide a cohesive, standardised approach to recruitment across the county and consequently attract a wider pool of applicants to all partners. Partners include eight Borough and District Councils and the Peak District National Park Authority.

Each partner has its own individually branded, stand-alone e-recruitment site which operates within the framework of a multi-agency system.

The use of Abacus’ common template as the basis of the design for all the sites, together with the other standardisation procedures, has enabled the administration and running costs of the system to be kept to a minimum.