We spoke to Sarah Separovic, HR Director at River Learning Trust, about how easy and seamless moving to MyNewTerm was, and how the recruitment data provided is enabling them to track advertising trends
“Before we started working with MyNewTerm, we had a few recruitment challenges. The first thing was that we weren’t able to easily track our data. So, I couldn’t tell you at any one time how many vacancies we were advertising across the trust, or where our applicants saw our adverts. We couldn’t access any equality and diversity data, so there was a real lack of information. The other issue that we faced was that the applicant tracking system that we were using at the time didn’t feel like it was keeping pace with Keeping Children Safe in Education. Consequently, we had to introduce a lot of manual workarounds. For example, we were manually having to email out our criminal declaration form. That meant that it was additional work for our schools, but also an additional step that could have been missed in terms of the process. Thus, we had quite a few challenges in terms of recruitment.
It was frustrating because we knew there had to be something better out there in the market. We knew we couldn’t be the only trust finding these challenges. We were really looking for an education-focused applicant tracking system, but we wanted one that would be proactive and would keep one step ahead. Furthermore, it should help us achieve what we were looking to do. We also wanted to have data accessible so we could identify trends. We intended to use that in our recruitment strategy.
“Working with MyNewTerm has been a game changer because it’s meant that we have been able to see the data for the very first time and been able to look at some of the trends.”
I think one of the key things in terms of working with MyNewTerm is we really felt like MyNewTerm just got it. They just got the issues that we were trying to resolve and they were really receptive to feedback. We also found the onboarding process really seamless. We went live to all 28 schools at the same time. Actually, the feedback was just really positive and it was really straightforward. The training was really helpful and if we had any questions, we could basically talk to a human being. We could chat with the team and get a quick answer.
The moment we realised that MyNewTerm would work for us and would solve our challenges was when Wayne and the team were showing us the platform. They showed us the dashboard and the data. Immediately, it was a really exciting moment thinking “Okay yeah, this would be amazing!”
“MyNewTerm have been really responsive to any feedback that we have provided. “
One of the pieces of feedback that we gave to MyNewTerm was that we really wanted the system to integrate with the Department for Education Teaching Vacancies site. This integration would provide us more visibility of adverts and less time to post in different places. That was one of the pieces of feedback that MyNewTerm took away. They managed to provide that integration, so that’s definitely been a real advantage for us in terms of speeding things up at our end.
In terms of concrete results, as a result of the insights from the data which we didn’t have available before, we’ve actually used that data to inform our decision-making. This year we’ve taken the decision not to renew one of our advertising subscriptions that we have had for a number of years across the trust. This decision was based on having a solid 18 months of data to show to us that actually it wasn’t value for money.”
To learn more about the applicant tracking system of choice for the education sector, get in touch here with the MyNewTerm team today.
