USA 90% vs. UK 10%

by Felix Stroud-Allen,
Head of Sales for UK & Europe, Recruiternet UK

July 20 2005 - Only around 10 per cent of HR professionals in the UK within large organisations use applicant tracking systems, as opposed to approximately 90 per cent in the US.

Across the pond, the online job-seeking population grew 76 per cent in 2003 to 11.1 million - estimated to be 44 per cent of Internet users and 30 per cent of the total working population. This huge growth in electronic applications has opened the door for companies to manage their recruitment process in a cost-effective and efficient manner.

US companies have found that applicant tracking and talent management software can help in accessing a larger pool of quality candidates, reduce cost and time per hire, standardise candidate communications and reduce administration and paper expenses in the recruitment process.

Dunkin' Brands, which includes such familiar names as Baskin Robbins and Dunkin' Donuts, faced a monumental challenge managing its employee recruitment process across 40 countries, 11,000 franchised stores and 10,000 employees.

Dunkin' Brands needed to address the cost per hire, the time to hire and the amount of paper and disconnects within the recruitment process. By relying on Projectix, Recruiternet's web-based applicant tracking system, Dunkin' Brands was able to achieve the following results:

• Average cost per hire reduction of 65%
• Time to fill reduction of 35% (83 days to 54 days)
• Overall recruiting costs slashed by US$1 million in first year
• Six-month return on investment (ROI) of 7,300 per cent.

In the UK however, the industry is very young, and there is a real need for proper applicant tracking. According to the ORES 2003 Survey over half the companies researched by Recruiternet do not track their cost per hire and some of them don't even know the source of the applicant.

The research showed:

• 56 per cent don't track their cost per hire
• 39 per cent don't track source of application
• 69 per cent don't automatically acknowledge receipt of application
• 85 per cent sift CVs entirely by hand
• 87 per cent don't use online screening tools to cut down on work processing applications.

A huge opportunity exists to generate cost and time savings in the recruitment process. However the future looks positive. Recruiternet also found that the majority of UK recruiters intend to make significant improvements to their processes in the near term.

45 per cent aim to create or improve their corporate career site, 45 per cent would like better response management tools, 41 per cent would like to offer candidates online application forms and 29 per cent aim to create their own CV database.

And not a moment too soon - after seeing the kinds of benefits US recruiters are experiencing!

As Joe Capp, Director of Talent Acquisition, Dunkin' Brands, sums up, "we've moved from being a reactive, paper-pushing employment function, to being a proactive, talent-acquisition programme that is doing direct sourcing and creating pools of talent"!

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