HomeServe

People are key to HomeServe, serving its 1.3 million UK Membership customers. HomeServe recruits for a vast range of roles, including support vacancies, covering back office functions such as marketing, HR, and finance, as well as volume vacancies for contact centre roles and field engineers.

Having managed recruitment with a bolt-on recruitment solution through its HR & Payroll provider, the recruitment team didn’t have the flexibility and scalability to manage recruitment in a way that comes with a dedicated recruitment platform.

The team depended on updating Excel spreadsheets alongside the bolt-on solution, which impacted candidate experience, efficiency of the recruitment team, and reporting consistency.

“ We knew we had efficiency improvements to make that would positively impact the candidate experience at multiple points. We wanted to design how our processes should work and build the brand/engagement into the candidate experience.” - Rachel Haynes, Head of Recruitment, HomeServe

HomeServe changed its approach to recruitment to address their candidate experience issues. In summary:

• There was a disjointed candidate experience with multiple routes for candidates to apply. With no dedicated careers site to engage with candidates, the static careers area had one fixed application form and no flexibility to showcase the brand and company values.
• The team received applications and CVs by email and via job boards, and any tracking and activity that took place was in silos or managed manually via spreadsheets.
• Vacancy sign-off was manual and time-consuming, delaying advertising and filling vacancies.
• Finding HomeServe jobs took work!
• The candidate experience could have been better. It wasn’t designed to engage or communicate with candidates throughout the process and had little communication regarding receipt of applications, status updates and outcomes, or set-up of job alerts.
• Application drop-off was common with a 79% drop-off rate from job board to application.
• Manual reporting on aspects of recruitment was painful to prepare. The team wanted more visibility of areas for improvement and data to back up decisions.
• The hiring manager’s experience was key to rethinking the recruitment process. The team wanted a consistent process to help hiring managers with their recruitment and provide flexibility for the recruitment team and hiring managers to improve collaboration and the ability to respond consistently and on time.
• The limitations of the manual processes made it difficult to comply with GDPR legislation and ensure candidate consent is in line with regulations.

Underpinning the approach to change was the need for a fit-for-purpose recruitment solution to replace the bolt-on recruitment solution and deliver the best candidate experience.

“We are aware that our current needs won’t be the same in a year, or year 3, or year 6. We are a business that is constantly adapting and required a system that is flexible enough to grow with us, market changes and candidate expectations.”

Connecting recruitment technology

By implementing Eploy’s complete Applicant Tracking System and Talent CRM, HomeServe have designed how they want their processes to work and to get jobs in front of the right candidates.

The project scoping phase included a detailed plan covering all requirements by location, department, function, position, user type, and access requirements. The plan also covered requirements for requisition and authorisations, recruitment workflows, registration and application process and candidate interaction across the whole process.

Delivery of a dedicated careers site and technical integrations were critical to delivering the candidate experience from the initial stages of attraction through to the point of offer.

Eploy is the central hub for all recruitment activity at HomeServe, connected with various other technologies used within the full hiring process. For example, HomeServe is FCA-regulated and uses Experian for background checking, which is integrated into Eploy to eliminate lengthy manual checks.

HomeServe have also implemented Eploy’s complete Indeed integration, to increase visibility and searchability to get the right jobs in front of candidates. Jobs appear on Indeed automatically and enable candidates to apply directly on Indeed, including screening questions that are entirely managed within Eploy’s Discover tool. All applications are instantly transferred into Eploy, ensuring a smooth candidate journey.

The Recruitment Team also use Eploy’s Multi-Poster to send vacancy details to preferred job boards. By sending the same vacancy simultaneously to the chosen job boards, the team saves time and can better manage vacancies, applicant tracking, and candidate management.

HomeServe’s careers website is designed to include a wealth of candidate-centric content that helps engage candidates and provides a streamlined job search and application process, fully underpinned by Eploy’s award-winning Candidate Portal technology.

The careers website also features accessibility technology from Recite Me, an Eploy partner. Recite Me helps ensure the new site is ‘accessible for all’ by providing a toolbar full of accessibility and language support options.

“Eploy fit HomeServe culture and gave a different impression from some of the bigger vendors we evaluated, who made it clear we would not be a priority. The Eploy aftercare and customer success team are fantastic. Nothing is too much trouble.”

Candidate experience has improved. Previously, it took candidates 4-6 minutes to apply, resulting in a huge drop-off with candidates abandoning their applications. Since implementing Eploy, candidates have been taking under a minute to apply, improving application rates and reducing job board spend.

Candidate communication is now automated, but that doesn’t mean impersonal. It still has an authentic, personal touch and explains what to expect when working at HomeServe. When notifying candidates of receipt or outcome of the application, communication is considerate, timely, relevant, and trackable within Eploy.

Candidate screening and feedback has been greatly improved. A pre-employment screening process was introduced alongside online onboarding to reduce delays at the offer stage. Candidates now receive and accept their job offer within a matter of minutes, rather than waiting approximately ten days for the offer pack to arrive by post, complete paperwork and return by post to HR. Reference requests are automated, and once the candidate commences in post, their details are automatically exported for the Payroll Team.

HomeServe launched a standalone candidate careers site to portray the company culture and employer brand values and improve the candidate experience, reflecting what it’s like to work with HomeServe. This consistent candidate journey on all devices includes flexible search by role type and location to find the ideal role, featured vacancies and a link to Glassdoor reviews to help candidates decide to apply. Online applications and candidate registration for job alerts are now fully automated, improving the speed of registering and applying. This includes a candidate self-service portal for candidate management through the process that also gives candidates power over their data and preferences. CV parsing technology supports ease of registration, application, talent pooling and job alerts. Data anonymisation doesn’t require manual intervention. Onboarding module features allow a customised online onboarding experience and integrated pre-employment checks, chasing outstanding references and online signable employment contracts. An integration to Zellis exports new starter data to the HR system to ensure the candidate experience continues across technologies.

Download the full case study here.