Craig Smith, Chief Operations Officer at Bedfordshire Schools Trust, spoke to us about being the very first trust that joined MyNewTerm and the benefits they have experienced since joining.
“So before I started working with MyNewTerm, we had a variety of different ways of recruitment and we are a high autonomy trust so our schools will lead and decide on their recruitment practices themselves but it was quite different across the trust. We have been able to change that substantially by using MyNewTerm. In working with the previous set of arrangements it could be quite frustrating sometimes because you would be seeking to support schools and we are very keen that schools lead and manage their own recruitment but you’d be working across different schools that do it a very different way, so you would have very different outcomes.
I think having one single platform that works for the whole trust has made life so much easier and so much better and made us a much more attractive trust to apply to. Working with MyNewTerm has been a revelation really. During the time that we worked with them (and we were the first trust that they ever worked with), it’s been able to bring much more coherence to our recruitment processes and I think it’s made us as an employer much more attractive in the marketplace.
“MyNewTerm has continually evolved and developed its product over the last few years.”
We get the benefits of that directly so that’s been a real bonus for us. We’ve worked with MyNewTerm since they started since they really launched the product, and throughout that whole period, when we’ve got queries, when we are uncertain about something when we’ve got ideas about how the product might be improved, we have a really healthy relationship with Wayne and the team at MyNewTerm so we’ve been able to put in requests. The really interesting thing for me is that they clearly go away and reflect on that and think actually is this something that would improve our product? I like to feel we have helped shape the development of MyNewTerm but, equally, we have been real beneficiaries of those developments.
“The product has not stood still as a tool to help us improve our recruitment and has become so much more than just an advertising platform. It helps in so many different ways. “
By using MyNewTerm, we’ve seen some real advances and some real payback and support from MyNewTerm. We see straight away that schools can manage their recruitment much better, some of the in-built functions and features of the system that make life that make life so much easier; be that taking up references, or being able to send messages out to candidates, it means that we can focus on that really key bit of making sure we get the right person for the job. It’s streamlined and professionalised our processes, and that ultimately means that we’re more attractive in the marketplace and that we then get a better quality of candidates. It’s been a really successful move from our point of view.
“If you’re on the fence about whether to work with MyNewTerm, I would recommend that you just do it.”
