CHALLENGE
Cannock Chase District Council and Stafford Borough Council are local government authorities within the borough of Staffordshire. The council’s employ around 680 staff in total, with 8 in the recruitment function. 

They were looking to introduce one robust applicant tracking system across both councils. Yet needed to provide a solution that would allow for their own independently branded portals and unique processes to take place. As well as the inevitable desire to introduce efficiencies and reduce the administrative burden of recruitment, the Councils were keen to bring in consistency across applications (including the format) and their recruitment policies. In doing so, it would let both organisations to pass greater control to their Recruiting Managers – allowing real-time access to all of their own campaign related information.



SOLUTION
engage|ats shared service platform provides Cannock Chase District Council and Stafford Borough Council a best-of-both-world’s solution to managing two separate processes under the umbrella of one system. 

Our solution allows the two councils to continue to facilitate candidate recruitment in line with their own procedures, whilst gaining efficiencies through collaboration and centralisation of all recruitment information management. And, from a candidates perspective they see different interfaces and application forms depending on which council portal they are on, but with the added advantages of being served relevant jobs for both Cannock and Stafford. 
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In addition, recruiting managers can log vacancies for approval, review submitted applications, shortlist and give feedback through the system 24/7, remotely and via their mobiles or tablets. 

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SUCCESS 
“engage|ats has made a considerable contribution to streamlining the recruitment process. We particularly like the ability to monitor a candidate’s progress in detail and this has proved invaluable to the HR team. The ability to deal with telephone queries, including questions from managers on the number of applicants, to applicants querying the progress of shortlisting can be handled with ease in a very short amount of time and with great accuracy. It increases contact with applicants at each stage of the recruitment process as we can communicate through automated emails.  The bulk email function is especially useful for recruitment campaigns with a large volume of applicants. On the whole the reaction from our managers has been very positive. Managers like the look and feel of the system and in particular like the fact that they can see the progress of their vacancies in real time.”
- HR Services Manager