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Case Study - National Forensic Science Technology Center

The National Forensic Science Technology Center Streamlines Every Aspect of Hiring with Hyrell

About the National Forensic Science Technology Center

The National Forensic Science Technology Center (NFSTC) is a not-for-profit corporation headquartered in Largo, Florida. Founded in 1995, NFSTC provides quality forensic services including training, assessment, research, and technology assistance to the justice, forensic and defense industries.

Revisiting a Labor Intensive, Manual Approach to Hiring

Prior to 2013, NFSTC used a manual approach for applications and hiring. Each stage of the process was labor intensive. When posting open positions to online job boards, the HR team had to decide whether to pay for postings or use free job boards. Once the applications came in, they were tracked in spreadsheets and folders. Scheduling interviews often resulted in phone tag with candidates. Once an employment offer was made, candidate  information was sent to two companies to perform background checks. The resulting reports then had to be gathered and reviewed. 

As the hiring workload grew, Liz Yourkievitz, Human Resources Director, and her team decided to investigate different alternatives for automating their hiring processes.  Compliance issues were also a key driver for making a change. As a federal contractor, when NFSTC grew to more than 50 employees, it became subject to more EEO reporting and tracking. Handling this manually was time consuming and cumbersome. The third party reseller for NFSTC’s human resource management system referred the team to Hyrell. “We glanced at other applicant tracking systems, but they proved to be cost prohibitive. We were impressed by Hyrell’s flexibility, simplicity, scalability, and pricing,” said Yourkievitz. 

Automating the Hiring Process from End to End

NFSTC’s first impression of Hyrell was positive – the HR team found that the system was extremely easy to implement and no extensive setup was needed. NFSTC now leverages Hyrell features to automate every stage of the hiring process: 
 
 
Posting Jobs Online
 
Simply by clicking a checkbox, the HR team can immediately send open positions to the most effective online job boards. “We have more consistency with our job postings now, because we can pull templates from Hyrell and reuse them. We can also examine historical information in the system and see how many hits different postings got,” said Yourkievitz.  
 
Scheduling Interviews Electronically 
 
Initially Yourkievitz was hesitant to use email alone to schedule candidate interviews, since it felt impersonal. She started using the functionality in Hyrell in stages. First she sent emails and then followed up with calls. Then her workload increased and she simply became too busy to make phone calls to candidates. “When I began scheduling interviews exclusively through Hyrell, I realized how streamlined the process was. In addition, candidates appreciated it and didn’t feel it was impersonal at all,” noted Yourkievitz. 
 
Tracking Candidate Status 
 
Using Hyrell’s Status and Views features, both HR and hiring managers at NFSTC can easily see where different candidates are in the hiring process. Status designates which stage of the process applicants are at. HR uses a personalized view, so they  only see candidates that are actively in consideration. In addition, a custom view was created for the hiring managers so they only see the applicants that are ready for their review. “Before Hyrell, I used to do data dumps and create pivot tables to get insight into hiring. The great thing about Stages and Views is that they keep everything neat and tidy,” said Yourkievitz. 
 
Streamlining Background Checks
 
Hyrell integrates with NFSTC’s background check company, so reports are funneled directly into the system. The one stop shop approach was a “no brainer,” according to Yourkievitz.
 
Tracking EEO Statistics
 
The reporting functionality in Hyrell allows NFSTC to gather EEO data quickly and easily for compliance purposes.

A Better Experience for HR, Hiring Managers, and Candidates 

To date, NFSTC has been very pleased with Hyrell and the solution has been well received by both hiring managers and candidates. “The questions used to pre-qualify applicants were quickly embraced by our hiring managers. They appreciate that the job-specific questions give them insight into candidates’ hard and soft skills. This reduces the amount of time they spend screening resumes. And they can clearly see that they are now getting better and more targeted candidates for their positions,” said Yourkievitz.

Candidates also appreciate the clear communication and always knowing where they are in the hiring process. Yourkievitz was recently working on filling an HR manager position for a sister organization. At least two thirds of the candidates commented on how transparent the process was and noted that Hyrell eliminates the “HR black hole” that occurs at many organizations.

NFSTC’s Human Resources team appreciates that Hyrell’s development is very responsive to the user community’s feedback. “We get more attention from Hyrell than we would from a larger platform, and we see a direct impact of our feedback in updates to the system’s features” said Yourkievitz. “Whether you are a small business or just looking for an affordable solution, you can’t do better than Hyrell. We’ve found nothing that comes close in terms of the quality and price.” 

 
 

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