As one of the world’s leading real estate empires, Colliers International has over 10,000 employees in 66 countries – including Australia. In fact, Colliers International Australia is one of the brightest success stories of the entire organization, with the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals ranking it among the 100 best outsourcing firms.
This achievement was thanks to the effort of 1,700 staff, a figure which has increased by 40% in the last year. However, as Liam Ovenden, Director of Acquisitions, Careers and Talent Management at Colliers International Australia explained to SmartRecruiters, that success wasn’t guaranteed. In fact, their hiring success was almost scuppered by a poor applicant tracking system.
Wasting Time In A Legacy ATS
Liam found their older applicant tracking system wasn’t evolving in pace with the recruitment market. What’s more, it was creating multiple points of contention across the company, resulting in wasted work hours and irritated staff. Liam explained:
“We found we were constantly engaging in tedious tasks. Loading a job was extremely time consuming, especially when posting to multiple sites. Any change in requirements, no matter how slight, was almost like reinventing the wheel.”
This software also let down Colliers in other areas, even in simple tasks such as keeping all candidates on record. Their legacy system made it too difficult to locate individuals who had been contacted in the past, no doubt adding to the tedium. What’s more Colliers was forking out money to post a new job every time a position needed to filled, even if they had previously interviewed someone perfect for the role.
All told, this situation was diminishing Colliers’ competitive advantage and most likely turning away potential applicants with a poor candidate experience.
From The Worst To The Best
Luckily, Colliers International Australia sought advice from their parent company, who suggested they look into SmartRecruiters. It’s a decision Liam Ovenden didn’t regret, adding:
“I’m pretty sure we were using one of the worst and most outdated legacy ATS platforms. Now I’m confident that we’re using one of the best talent acquisition suites available.”
Here’s how SmartRecruiters helped Colliers International Australia turn their hiring around:
- SmartRecruiters’ easy to navigate platform allows for collaborative hiring with multiple hiring managers. Each member of the team can view the work of the others and come to group decisions. This was especially important to Colliers Australia whose 26 offices are spread over a large geographic region.
- The platform also allows for seamless communication between both recruiters, team members and candidates. More importantly for Colliers, all candidate information is retained and easy to find. Even executives began to get involved in the process, namely because it was so simple.
- More engaging job postings, backed up by integration with social media platforms greatly reduced bounce rates, meaning candidate applications went up.
As a result of SmartRecruiters’ platform, Colliers saw their number of hires via referrals increase threefold, reducing the cost and time needed to fill positions.
To find out more about the partnership between Colliers International Australia and SmartRecruiters, read our case study, Colliers International: Leading global real estate firm closes more deals with stronger candidates.
