Type of Firm:

Recruiting – Permanent placement, temporary and contract

Location:

Offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Mississauga, Ottawa, Halifax and affiliates in Montreal and the U.S.

Industry:

Accounting & Finance, Engineering & Technical, Human Resources, Information Technology, Legal, Sales & Marketing, Supply Chain Management and Office Personnel

Size of Team:

110 recruiters

Founded in 1975, David Aplin Recruiting is one of the largest and most trusted professional recruiting firms in Canada. With offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Mississauga, Ottawa, Halifax and affiliates in Montreal and the U.S., Aplin’s network of contacts span across North America.

Taking the Business to the Next Level

As a result of a number of corporate acquisitions that had occurred in different locations across Canada, David Aplin Recruiting was using three different recruiting software solutions. To position themselves well for future revenue growth, David Aplin set out to improve their key business processes.

Multiple Recruiting Systems Cause Problems

A number of challenges resulted from Aplin supporting three different recruiting solutions. Each recruiter and recruiting branch had their own way of using recruiting systems, including the inputting of data. This made the management of real-time recruiting data for David Aplin as a whole company very difficult, if not impossible.

Jeff Aplin, Vice President, Calgary Region at David Aplin states; “There are many problems that arise from having all our consultants working from different recruiting systems, but the biggest risk of all was the inability to manage the ethical side of the business. For example, before you directly source or headhunt candidates, a recruiter needs to know whether the candidate is active in the local market or elsewhere. Otherwise, a candidate might already have a relationship with a recruiter at another branch. Not having visibility into information like this can lead to all sorts of problems.”

Need for a New Applicant Tracking System

If Aplin was to continue growing, they would need everyone in the organization to have access to a common database in real-time. By replacing three recruiting systems with one common system (often referred to as an applicant tracking system (ATS)), Aplin would have the tool to consolidate many of the varying branch level and individual desk level business processes.

Rigorous Selection Process

Jeff led a selection committee of ten people with representatives from each branch at David Aplin, including the companies IT Manager. The committee‘s top requirements for a new ATS included:

Integration with Outlook®

Jeff states, “Integration with Microsoft® Outlook® is important because it is the application that people use, whether it’s people you are trying to hire or internal people. If Outlook didn’t integrate well with an ATS you would end up having two different systems, an Outlook system and likely some proprietary email component as part of the recruiting system. That would not work well for us.”

Automated Resume Processing

Cheralee Kattenburg, Training and Development Coordinator at David Aplin, explains, “We receive, on average, 4500 resumes a month and MaxHire removes the burden of manually entering this data. We used to hire a temp to input resumes into our old ATSs. By having automated resume parsing there is no longer a delay and our consultants are able to respond more quickly to clients and candidates.”

Activity Tracking for Candidates, Clients and Jobs

Another important requirement for Aplin was real-time job status tracking. Cheralee explains, “If the data wasn’t real-time, I am not sure the consultants would buy into the use of an ATS. If up-to-date information isn’t available in a candidate or client record things can go pretty sideways.”

Other ATS requirements included excellent search functionality, integration with Aplin’s website, enhanced security features, ease of use, service and support.

MaxHire Chosen for its Ease of Use

Selecting an ATS was a huge financial decision and one that Aplin didn’t take lightly. The selection committee evaluated and tested a number of different ATS systems. Jeff explains, “We did the ATS evaluations for over a month so that our team had enough time to roll up their sleeves and play around with all of the available features in each vendor’s system.”

Jeff states, “Of all the applications we demoed, everyone, across the board, liked MaxHire the best. The whole Microsoft® look and feel to MaxHire is really attractive to us. Whereas people were quite reserved about using any of the other ATS vendors, MaxHire was the only one that people just plain liked using. It’s a highly functional program that gives us everything we need – real-time integrated Outlook email, automated resume parsing, job, candidate and client pipelining, as well as the numerous other features we needed.”

MaxHire Used as a Recruiting Management Tool

Since implementing MaxHire, Aplin has experienced a number of process improvements that resulted in helping their recruiters to be more efficient and effective. Jeff explains, “We are benefiting from the ability to measure performance by the outcome of billings, but we are also taking advantage of the ability to monitor tasks and activities. MaxHire is valuable as a recruiting management tool. “

CRM functionality Helps David Aplin’s Business Development

Cheralee states, “The CRM part of MaxHire is also really good. Our marketing group utilizes the enhanced email functionality for various initiatives including sending out our client newsletters, and invitations to events.”

With all of Aplin’s recruiters now using the same MaxHire database, instead of three databases, they now have access to candidates that they would not otherwise. Cheralee adds, “Candidates over the years have become much more mobile and willing to look at other centers for employment. All our consultants have unrestricted access to our National database, which has benefited many of our clients.”

Two years after the go-live date, Aplin has seen dramatic increases in productivity as people have recognized the business value created by the system. Documents created have increased by 339%, companies created increased by 140%, phone call activities increased by 193% and contact records are up 73% compared to the first 6 months after go live.

Jeff remarks, “I have no doubt that MaxHire has made us a lot more efficient. We communicate better ; we’ve closed more placements. MaxHire has been an enabler of growth. Since we went live, our fee revenues have grown significantly. People are always the single most important driver of growth, but system improvements have also contributed to improved business results. We would have really struggled to maintain our growth levels had it not been for putting MaxHire in place. “

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