COI Collaborate Recruitment Initiative Success Story
Hiring competent, high quality candidates for open positions is a challenge for all organizations. In an effort to simplify the process for our members the Council of Industry recently began using the applicant tracking software, iCIMS. iCIMS allows Human Resource professionals to more efficiently manage the recruitment process, and helps lessen some of the challenges associated with filling open positions. Debra Sherman, the Human Resources Director at Fair-Rite Products for the last 19 years, started using the program about 10 months ago and is extremely satisfied with the results.
Prior to using iCIMS Debra was using Excel Spreadsheets to manage her applicants, and filed resumes manually. She noted the difficulty with sorting through paper resumes and trying to remember which candidates possessed the qualifications she was looking for. During her search to find an applicant tracking system that met her needs the Council of Industry introduced her to iCIMS. The ease of use, and ability to simply search for specific skill sets listed on candidates’ resumes, sparked her interest in the software. She posted her first job on the system 10 months ago, which also published the position to Indeed, Monster, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and several other employment-oriented platforms. Since that date Fair-Rite Products has posted 29 open positions, received over 560 applications, and filled 16 of those positions.
Debra knew that the software was going to be a success when iCIMS helped her fill a position that Fair-Rite had open for over a year. She was struggling to find a qualified candidate to fill an Applications Engineer position, and had little success uploading the job to LinkedIn and other platforms herself. Once she uploaded the job to iCIMS she finally found the right candidate for the position, and filled the job in just a few short months. Debra believes that iCIMS played a big role in finally finding the ideal person for the job.
iCIMS has vast capabilities, and the Council of Industry continues to assist its members in understanding how to fully utilize the software in order to get the best results. Debra described the system as “robust” and likes that it gives her the ability to easily weed out non-qualified candidates. She also commented on the convenience of always knowing the number of candidates who applied for a job, having the ability to sort candidates by their commuting distance, reviewing the number of days it took to fill a position, and quickly emailing applicants through the system’s email templates. Debra believes that the ability to notify rejected candidates when a position has been filled is a common courtesy that was difficult, if not impossible, to do before she had access to the iCIMS automatic email templates. Now she can easily contact all rejected candidates with just a few clicks.
The success that Debra has experienced at Fair-Rite is a prime example of how beneficial the collaborative recruitment initiative can be for our members. Debra stated that, “The Council of Industry’s solution to our applicant tracking needs has been a huge success and has far surpassed my expectations.” Moving forward she hopes to fully eliminate the paper application with the help of the Council of Industry.
If you’re interested in learning more about the Collaborative Recruitment Initiative please contact Johnnieanne Hansen at jhansen@councilofindustry.org or (845) 565- 1355 to discuss your recruitment obstacles and decided if this initiative is right for you. We are always willing to set up a time to speak with you about the capabilities of iCIMS and provide a demonstration of the system.
