The University of Birmingham’s internal recruitment agency worklink was finding paper a headache. Eploy provided welcome automation

THE CHALLENGE

With tuition fees nowadays running into thousands of pounds, providing the 27,000 students at the University of Birmingham with access to paid work opportunities on campus has probably never been more important. 

But until just under a year ago, the system for recruiting students to typical student roles, for example as research assistants or working in the students’ union bar, simply wasn’t up to scratch. 

Tracy Murphy, recruitment manager at the university’s internal recruitment agency, WorkLink, launched in September 2012, told Recruiter the previous paper system was “a headache”.  

“Each hirer would recruit to their own standards, and then put through a manual pay form,” she said. They would also collect eligibility documents and send them to finance to put through the system, she added.

Inefficient and time-consuming, the old system restricted both the number of jobs offered and the pool of students able to access those jobs. Consequently, in 2011, the number of placements made was only about 1,500, with many students not being aware of the job opportunities at all.  

The university needed to help managers find the right student more quickly. So at the start of 2012, it invited three recruitment software companies to tender.

The process was overseen by Murphy, a former manager of a Randstad office in Leicester, who had been brought in that April to complete the project. 

“I have worked for a high street agency with a piece of software that wasn’t user-friendly, so I had been able to map all the processes I wanted,” said Murphy.

THE SOLUTION

WorkLink opted for the cloud-based recruitment and applicant tracking software provided by Eploy of Kidderminster.

For Murphy, the main attraction was an automated end-to-end process – from attraction, through selection, to payment. “It’s the fact that it is completely paperless that really works.”

The second standout feature for Murphy was the ability to electronically communicate with hiring managers and students. 

Chris Bogh, who co-founded Eploy with Paul Burgess in 1998 shortly after both graduated from Birmingham University, told Recruiter the Guild had been in touch on and off about using Eploy’s software, though the project had started in earnest in summer 2012.

Bogh said the assignment involved combining typical recruitment agency requirements, such as sourcing jobs and finding candidates, with those typically demanded by corporate recruiters, such as functions aimed at internal hiring managers. 

About 80% of what Eploy provided was off the peg, said Bogh, with the remainder customised for the university. 

One important adaptation was to link the authorising of timesheets in the hiring manager’s portal to the payroll system. The Eploy system itself was integrated with the payroll system through automated services, said Bogh.

For him, a particular area of complexity was the candidate compliance, such as identity checks, that internal university recruitment services are particularly hot on. “We had to make sure the compliance was nailed, and that it was all logged onto the system,” he said. 

The challenge of “quite strict timescales” to meet the launch deadline was circumvented by Eploy’s ability to phase in different aspects of the specification, with work on integrating the payroll completed “a couple of weeks” after initial launch.

Further post-launch tweaks included automated emails warning users that compliance checks have not been carried out, leaving Murphy clearly impressed – as she is with Eploy’s technical support. “We can phone with a new requirement, and it won’t take a year,” she said.  

Beyond simply meeting WorkLink’s technical specifications, Murphy said Bogh and his team were enthusiastic and easy to work with. Bogh reciprocates that the university was a “brilliant” client. “We didn’t have to get involved in selling it to the internal line managers – they were keen to do it,” he said. 

Almost a year on, Bogh said of the university staff: “They are using the system very well.” But with placements rising from 1,500 in 2011 to 4,200 to date in WorkLink’s first year, 3,800 students registered, and a wide variety of vacancies – from research assistants to freshers’ week student ambassadors – and a wider pool of candidates, including from abroad, perhaps that should come as no surprise.

Lessons learned 

Candidate compliance is essential for universities, so Eploy’s Chris Bogh “had to make sure the compliance was nailed”. Automated emails warn users where compliance checks have not been done – a feature welcomed by WorkLink’s Tracy Murphy

Colin Cottell

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