Jobpartners serves some of the biggest names in retail

London, 2nd November 2006 – Jobpartners, the European leader of software solutions dedicated to the People Relationship Management (PRM) market, today announced that it has been recognised as one of the top vendors within the retail industry for applicant tracking systems (ATS) by the ‘Retailers Guide to E-recruitment’. Applicant tracking systems manage the entire recruitment process from the definition of the required profile, to selection, to hire, to onboarding. Inefficiencies during this process can lead to the loss of talented candidates, as well as customers of retail companies. Jobpartners has helped many large retail organisations such as Superdrug and Boots to hire the best applicants rapidly and cost effectively, and enhance employer brand.

“As more and more of the top retail brands such as Boots and Superdrug look to maximise the Internet as one of their primary recruitment channels, the need for a cost effective and robust ATS becomes paramount,” commented Peter Gold, author of the Retailers Guide to E-recruitment. “As one of the leading ATS vendors to retailers, Jobpartners is well placed to support others that recognise that online is no longer just for technical people¹. Pretty much everyone expects to buy online, and the same level of people now expects to apply for a job online; to disappoint them is damaging to the employer brand.”

After a careful review of a number of vendors, Superdrug installed ActiveRecruiter, a module of the ActiveSuite family of PRM solutions from Jobpartners, to manage its entire recruitment process. This has taken Superdrug’s recruitment process to another level.

“Prior to implementing ActiveRecruiterTM, we were always a bit nervous about placing recruitment adverts online as the company couldn’t handle huge numbers of CVs,” explained Fiona McLean, HR Manager at Superdrug. “We can now advertise on job-boards with confidence as we know we can deal with applications efficiently. Faster response times together with greater consistency in handling CVs are helping us to meet our objective of improving the Superdrug employer brand and attract, hire and retain talented people.”

¹ Source: Retailers Guide to E-recruitment 2006

Cost savings at Superdrug have been dramatic with a reduction in cost per hire of 87%. The company now recruits 54% of all its store and head office management and pharmacist vacancies via its website.

Boots also uses Jobpartners’ ActiveRecruiter to streamline its recruitment process.

“ActiveRecruiter has been instrumental in streamlining our recruitment process and providing speed and consistency. This has greatly helped to enhance our employer brand, and increase the attraction and retention of candidates,” commented Susie Maskell, Design Specialist, HR at Boots. “We can now quickly roll out large scale, efficient recruitment campaigns and we have a database of applications on file, which can be called upon for future skill requirements. We also have a much wider presence in the market and better visibility of recruitment right across the company, which has really improved our people relationship management.”

According to research for the Retailers Guide to E-recruitment, employers are finding more success with their career pages using online recruitment in terms of finding higher quality of applicants in comparison to traditional recruitment processes. Recent studies indicate 51% of hires in 2005 came via online methods with 21% using company websites. Retail recruiters need to therefore have a clear, concise and consistent careers page to attract and monitor incoming applications.

The Retailers Guide to E-recruitment is published by Peter Gold of Hire Strategies Limited. http://www.hirestrategies.co.uk.