ADP’s recent annual Analyst Day was held at its new Innovation Lab in Pasadena, California, with CEO Carlos Rodriquez and others articulating ADP’s strategy and vision for its clients. Top of Rodriquez’s list of priorities was the ability to meet the global talent needs of clients, the importance of which was underscored by several client presentations, including one from Irma Long of Follett Corporation, the focus of this blog.

Rodriquez’s opening remarks reflected ADP’s strong focus on talent management, including:

• Recognizing that the job of the CHRO has changed, and is now focused on attracting the best talent
• The importance of focusing on the user and associate experience
• The objective of solving clients’ business problems seamlessly and completely (including via ADP’s HCM solutions).

Addressing Follett’s requirements

Follett Corporation is the world’s largest source of books, entertainment products, digital content, and multi-media for libraries, schools and retailers. Follett has 10k associates and averages 18k employees during its busy season.

Amongst Follett’s HR requirements was the need for a recruitment system that was configurable and simple to use, and that alleviated their store managers from the burden of recruitment. Follett also wanted to improve the candidate experience.

Follett is an ADP Vantage HCM client, with services that include HR, Payroll, Benefits, Recruitment, Onboarding, Talent Management, Background Screening, and ADP DataCloud. To help fulfill Follett’s recruiting needs, ADP held a 2-day brainstorming session with the client. As a result, ADP was able to significantly improve the candidate experience for Follett, with initiatives including:

• Employment Branding, with the objective of treating candidates as individuals, and not just as a set of résumés. An interactive website was implemented, which gives candidates the ability to chat instantly with recruiters. In addition, to maximize candidate engagement, the website includes fun facts about Follett in the form of a scavenger hunt. When one question is completed, candidates move forward in the maze
• Thank-you emails to candidates visiting the website, including links to a tool to help candidates with their job search
• Talent Communities, which includes the ability for the CMO to talk to the candidate audience with a video presentation of what it’s like to work at Follett
• Social distribution of job openings, including via Facebook and Twitter, were used to improve visibility (as a lot of the candidates were not familiar with Follett).

Quantifiable results

Results to date include:

• Candidate satisfaction improved by 80%
• 90% of candidates said they would refer other candidates to Follett (even if they did not get the job)
• Candidate traffic on the Follett website increased by 90% (>200k applicants YTD)
• Process optimization reduced hiring manager workflow from 12 to 2 steps.

In NelsonHall’s recent interviews with the clients of RPO vendors, improvement of candidate satisfaction was ranked as the third most important expected benefit, after improved scalability and improved quality of hire. Although Follett is an ADP Vantage HCM client and not a full RPO client using ADP recruiters, it is still a good example of how an outsourcing provider can greatly improve a client’s recruiting process via an effective combination of service and technology.