BIRMINGHAM, England, June 20, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

A major restructure at fashion and homeware retailer Matalan last year saw its internal Recruitment & Talent Team almost half in size and take on full responsibility for all recruitment across both retail and head office. This resulted in Matalan making the decision to adopt a corporate recruitment and applicant tracking software solution that would help meet its needs as a major employer.

After researching the market, Matalan, which has more than 200 stores across the UK, turned to Eploy® to create and implement a modern career portal powered by their industry leading web-based recruitment system and vendor management tools. This would not only enable the recruitment team to be more pro-active and achieve its stringent targets, but would also help reduce inefficiencies and improve the candidates' experience.

Paul McNulty, Head Office Recruitment Manager at Matalan, says: "The launch of our new career portal and recruitment system has been a great success thanks to Eploy's excellent service, support and experience. It has made a significance difference in how we can now manage our recruitment."

The Challenge

Prior to commissioning Eploy, Matalan had an antiquated career portal that was more about design than functionality. It lacked a user-friendly interface and the management of candidates was not as efficient as it should be - it was unintuitive with candidates resorting to emailing in CV's, which meant they went 'missing'.  

Because of the volume of vacancies and the administrative burden that this created with each application, Matalan was keen to streamline work processes and use the latest technology to enable staff to process CVs and applications quickly. It also wanted to be more pro-active in its recruitment search and maximise social media channels.

As a dynamic retail business that wants to attract young, dynamic, quality candidates, Matalan needed a modern career portal that could integrate with a feature-rich recruitment system and provide enhanced job and candidate search facilities.

It looked to Eploy to deliver the new candidate management system because of the company's proven track record and experience in building technically advanced web solutions for clients in both the agency and corporate world.

The Solution

Eploy offered Matalan a completely different proposition. A full service approach that included designing and building a new website on Eploy's recruitment platform.

Chris Bogh, Eploy's Technical Director explains: "By building a career portal from the outset on our feature-rich technology means it will operate a lot better than self-built portals or those driven by API's which can often be limited. This provides a higher level of recruitment functionality to improve the overall candidate experience, maximise reach and massively reduce recruitment admin."

For Matalan this approach works on several levels. The career portal has been attractively designed to reflect Matalan's brand and employee values, whilst the 'engine room' powers all the recruitment functionality required by the recruitment team, thus ensuring a positive candidate experience.

The attention to detail also extended to the career portal's domain name, http://www.matalan.jobs, which was registered by Eploy to further promote the Matalan brand.

Easy registration was another essential part of the process. When candidates upload their CV, their data is now automatically extracted and the registration fields are populated. The procedure is quick and convenient, which means that drop-off rates are low.

Registered candidates can also now choose their career preferences and sign up for job alerts, which are intelligently matched by Eploy to new vacancies.

The career portal is also designed so that candidates can:

• Update their details at any time;
• Apply for multiple jobs;
• Confirm interviews;
• Book assessment days that take place across the country.

Integrated into the core system are separate job boards for both internal and external candidates, all of which automatically track applications from source.

Eploy's web development team has also created a "new store" feature that allows candidates to see at a glance what opportunities exist near to them by linking a Google Map directly to new jobs in the system. Once they click on a new store they are taken to a list of jobs that they can then apply for.

Chris Bogh explains: "It is these kinds of interactive features that make a site easy to use."

Candidates are also able to share and recommend jobs to their friends via email or social media networks, including LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, and all applications are tracked by source automatically. The system integrates with Broadbean too, which allows Matalan to post jobs to multiple job boards.

And because Eploy is a browser-based recruitment system, it is uniquely compatible with all operating systems, including Apple Mac, and is accessible from all mobile devices, such as iPhones, Androids, Tablets and Netbooks.

More recently Eploy has added a Vendor Portal to help Matalan streamline and improve interactions with its PSL agencies.  This links directly with the central Eploy system, and automatically eliminates de-duplications in the system, ensures agencies operate in line with Matalan's compliance policy, and tracks the date and time of all applications.

The Results

Matalan has quickly benefited from the Eploy system.

Since its introduction:

• 25,000 new candidates have registered at http://www.matalan.jobs
• 15000 applications submitted via http://www.matalan.jobs
• 500 placements made

http://www.matalan.jobs  is now the main source for all applicants and placements.

In addition, the recruitment team has achieved:

• 20% Reduction in Time to Hire
• 95% Offer Acceptance Rate
• Increased Proactive Recruitment
• Attracted a Higher Volume of Applications

Company timescales dictate that there must be a 12 week turnaround for the recruitment of new stores and Eploy has enabled Matalan to achieve this important key performance indicator (KPI).

The eight-strong Recruitment & Talent Team can now handle the higher volume of applications and all recruitment activity with ease and they have reported an improved workflow, better communication with candidates and enhanced tracking and reporting.

Social media via LinkedIn is also proving to be an important recruitment tool. Matalan is now able to track and monitor feeds through its recruitment system and as a direct result of using social media proactively, it has successfully recruited seven senior positions.

Paul McNulty say: "We now have a feature-rich web-based career portal that not only serves to promote our brand, but also provides a positive recruitment experience for candidates. It has also helped to reduce our reliance on third party recruitment agency services and has improved our service to candidates by allowing us to deploy resources and budgets more efficiently.

"Eploy allows us to easily stay in touch with candidates, track them through the process and produce important KPIs and management information reports."

The Future

Matalan and Eploy's partnership continues to evolve and push the boundaries in online recruitment.  

In the immediate future Eploy will be adding a Talent Community and creating a mobile version of Matalan's Career Portal.  This is in addition to adding even more tools into the recruitment software to enable the recruitment team to manage graduates and executive recruitment more efficiently.

Chris Bogh explains: "Eploy is not a standard ATS system.  Its design means that it can support all areas of recruitment, and being web-based has the flexibility to be upgraded or linked to new technological enhancements at any time.  

Plus, with our combined experience of working in both the agency and corporate recruitment world, the system is very feature rich and covers all areas of recruitment which Matalan can now 'plug into' as they push further forward with their career portal."

For a free online demonstration or trial version, please visit http://www.eploy.co.uk or contact eploy® on 0800-073-4243 or email  info@eploy®.co.uk.

SOURCE Eploy