South East Recruitment Portal
SEE are involved in establishing a recruitment portal for councils in the South East.
- Background
- The South East Recruitment Portal
- Process improvements
- Potential cost savings
- Efficiency gains
- Return on investment
- Perceived benefits of developing a South East Recruitment Portal
- Next Steps
In April 2009 Communities and Local Government (CLG) provided funding to the North East Regional Improvement and Efficiency Partnership to manage and deliver a single recruitment portal for the NE region that would then be made available to other regions and other public sector partners. To date in the North East region there is 100% sign up by councils and 3 of the 4 fire and rescue services to the new portal. The portal has attracted 267,000 visits in the first 9 months since it was launched in January 2009 and in that period advertised 3,947 jobs, attracting 1,492 direct applications.
The portal is available at www.northeastjobs.org. It is easily accessible and provides a good reference point to demonstrate how a south east portal would look and deliver services to job seekers and councils in our region.
The South East Recruitment Portal
CLG grant funding has paid for the development and procurement of the NE portal (with a view to this being further developed for other regions). There is further grant funding available so that there will be no costs to participating councils for the first year of implementation of the south east portal. For the second and subsequent years providing end to end recruitment facilities, a subscription will be introduced. This is expected to be very modest and would be outweighed by the cost savings. In the North East this is expected to be between £5,000 and £13,000 per year per council (ranging from size / usage from district to county) and, depending on take-up, it is likely to be similar in our region.
We have been advised that the portal available to use by 1 June 2010. The one year grant funding for participating councils to benefit from recruitment advertising and the back office functions free of charge will commence from this time.
- Online search, notification and alerts that job seekers now expect from modern portals – particularly relevant in considering our image and competing with the private sector
- Application tracking facility, qualification screening, criminal record bureau pre-processing
- Workforce development tools such as induction programmes, skills and ability testing
- Helpful and user-friendly for job-seekers who register – e.g:
- pre-populated application forms to stop duplication of data input
- interview self-booking facility,
- qualification adviser providing clarification and background information to assist job-seekers in understanding what is required or how / where they can gain relevant qualifications,
- on-line assessment facilities (e.g. testing)
- A replacement and enhancement of expensive advertising in local / national and professional papers and journals
- A shared procurement route to avoid single purchases of e-recruitment systems or third party job search website systems
- Joined up, simplified and automated back-office processes for councils, including work-flow for those responsible for recruiting and modular application forms and processes
- Reduced costs of application packs and other paperwork / postage
Figures provided by the North East region after 10 months from the launch in January 2009 indicate typical savings to be made by councils. These are:
Annual cost savings – per council |
Typical District |
Typical county |
|---|---|---|
|
Vacancy advertising |
£25,000 |
£350,000 |
|
Application processes |
£10,000 |
£50,000 |
|
Admin staff |
£40,000 |
£60,000 |
|
Capital investment in recruitment systems (one-off) |
£80,000 |
£80,000 |
|
On-going recruitment systems costs |
£5,000 |
£10,000 |
Perceived benefits of developing a South East Recruitment Portal
Using the above as a guide, the extent of cost and resource savings to be achieved by our councils will depend on where each council is starting from. For example, those who are already using an on-line web-based recruitment facility will have already realised a level of savings so financial benefits to be gained will be less than councils who currently use traditional advertising through press and other media and use paper application forms.
Also, councils who are part of a county-wide recruitment portal, such as Surrey jobs and Hampshire Jobs will have realised significant resource savings already. That is not to say, however, there are not further gains to be made from aligning to a regional portal.
Please contact Juliet Thomas or Pam Barber to register your interest and we will keep you informed of the latest developments.