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The Greater Richmond ARC is an organization that provides a continuum of programs and services for individuals with developmental disabilities across the lifespan (infant to elderly) and all levels of disability (mild to profound). Formerly the Richmond Association for Mentally Retarded Children, ARC was founded in 1954 by a small, dedicated group of Richmond-area families. |
ARC now has more than 400 employees and five locations with multiple departments and supervisors. The organization looks to outside candidates for approximately 300 of those positions, actively recruiting for the position of client counselor.
ARC relies on two HR professionals, Vice President of Human Resources Charles Story and Human Resources Coordinator Liz Stokes, to make approximately 100 hires per year. According to Stokes, ARC’s hiring and recruiting process was laborious and disorganized prior to adopting Hyrell’s applicant tracking system.
When Stokes and Story received applications, they had to manually review each to determine if a candidate was qualified enough for an interview with a departmental supervisor. If a candidate was, they had to either make copies to hand-deliver to supervisors or scan all pages to send electronically. Depending on applicant flow, the process would sometimes take all day.
“It was a mess,” Stokes says. The process interfered with HR’s ability to deliver qualified candidates in a timely manner and constantly disrupted daily job requirements. What’s more, it negatively affected the applicant experience, resulting in a lower applicant flow.
To rectify these woes and streamline hiring and recruiting, Stokes began a search for a cost-effective applicant tracking system (ATS). Referred to Hyrell through a contact in ARC’s IT Department, Stokes and Story completed a free personal demonstration of the software. Reasonable price and extensive useful features quickly made Hyrell a frontrunner.
“Before implementing Hyrell, we had reviewed similar products from other vendors and found each of them to be inferior in functionality,” Story says. “Some were just incredibly expensive.”
Stokes found Hyrell’s Automatic Position Posting feature, which automatically publishes your job listing on leading online job boards, particularly helpful. “Hyrell makes posting a job very easy,” Stokes says. “It’s a lot faster than the way I used to post positions.”
Stokes was also impressed by Hyrell’s Auto Refresh feature because it allows ARC to actively recruit for the position of client counselor without having to continuously post the job.
Using Hyrell, ARC drastically reduced the time it takes the HR department to review applications and pass qualified candidates to hiring managers. “We are saving countless hours in the Human Resources area, as the Hyrell product eliminates the tedious and reductant task of screening and evaluating applicants manually,” Story says. “Plus, our hiring managers were able to adapt to the new system with a minimal amount of training.”
In addition, ARC is enjoying increases in applicants and in qualified hires, which is helping to reduce employee turnover. “We never had this much advertising exposure. It shows, as the number of applicants we receive now has almost doubled in just one year,” Stokes says.
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Year |
Total Applications |
Total Hires |
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2010 |
530 |
105 |
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2011 |
709 |
103 |
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2012 |
1,129 |
114 |
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2013 |
1,518 |
89 |
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2014 |
2,356 |
93 |
The easy-to-use Hyrell Applicant Tracking System increases exposure for ARC job openings and enables HR to review applications more quickly, which saves HR and hiring managers countless hours and drives qualified applicants.