Recruiting voluminous numbers of hires? Cablevision does, and after upgrading its applicant tracking system, it is nearly picture-perfect.
With the ongoing growth of telecommunication products and services, companies such as Cablevision Systems Corporation need to recruit in high volume to ensure they deliver the best service to customers. Realizing it could improve the hiring experience for candidates and recruiters alike, Cablevision replaced its manual, paper-based recruiting process with an applicant tracking solution from Kenexa, a provider of talent acquisition and retention solutions. Since implementing Kenexa Recruiter BrassRing, the company has reduced time-to-fill by a third, decreased costs per hire, and can process a high volume of candidates quickly and efficiently.
Cablevision is one of the nation’s leading telecommunications and entertainment companies, with a portfolio of operations that span high-speed Internet, digital cable television, residential telephone service, professional sports teams, and national television program networks. Headquartered in Bethpage, NY, the company has nearly 20,000 employees and serves more than three million customers in the New York City Area.
Like other cable operators, Cablevision hires in high volume for its call centers, sales groups, and field operations. However, under its previous manual recruiting processes and a non-web based applicant tracking system, it was difficult to keep up with the number
of candidates.
“Our challenge is that we often need a high volume of hires in a short time period, and in order to find the best, we have to consider a large number of candidates,” explained John Warrack, vice president of staffing for Cablevision. “Because our whole process was manual, it could take 10 days to two weeks to get an approved requisition delivered into the recruiters’ hands. And, because our applicant tracking system wasn’t web-based, it did not interact with our career site or human resource management system. As a result, posting jobs was slow and inefficient.”
While the requisition approval process was rife with delays, recruiters were also frustrated with the time it took to identify candidates. As a result, they often abandoned the company’s slow-to-respond database in favor of searching electronic job boards.
“Our system was not strong for running queries for candidates whose resumes were already in our database, and so our recruiters were not even using it,” added Cara Mancini, director of corporate & rainbow staffing. “Instead, they would go to Monster.com and search for resumes there because it was faster. We also did not have the ability to create reports without involving someone in our IT department. The system was antiquated and we realized we would get better results from a more efficient, web-based solution.”
After lobbying for budget approval to replace its system, and rejecting its PeopleSoft HRMS recruiting module as too expensive, the staffing team evaluated four solutions, ultimately choosing the Kenexa solution. This web-based applicant tracking system includes requisition creation, processing and posting, resume searching, sorting and filing, applicant workflow, interview scheduling and tracking, candidate communications, and reporting.
An improved internal job posting process and ability for employees to query the system for openings has resulted in an increased number of positions filled internally. It also enabled recruiters to be more creative by using advanced resume query tools to reach passive and active candidates, casting a wider net to get the best-qualified hires.
Warrack noted that Cablevision has also gained more effective use of its advertising and job postings because the company can now more easily access an inventory of resumes in its own database, thereby reducing search firm agency usage and quickly filling open positions.
Another improvement to its recruiting process is the ability to run reports to easily gain insight into its business and understand what positions are open or filled and which job openings are being worked.
Moving ahead, Cablevision plans on looking to integrate its applicant tracking system with other solutions such as its background check, drug screening, and candidate assessment solutions.
“We will be looking at integrating our Kenexa Recruiter BrassRing talent management system with other systems to further our recruiting efficiencies,” said Warrack.
“We are able to deal with a high volume of candidates in a more effective way and the increased capabilities of integrating with our HRMS and other systems have brought us into the 21st century.”
