The Access Group

Overview

The Access Group is a leading provider of industry-specific software solutions, including education, non-for-profit, health and social care, finance legal and HR, which streamline everyday processes for medium-sized UK and Asian Pacific organisations. They aim to provide best-in-class business management efficiencies that result in productivity gains, and give real-time insights which allow their customers to have the data and freedom they require to grow.

The past 10 years has seen a huge period of growth for The Access Group as they continuously evolve their product offering, to design intuitive solutions that change the way people work. However, like many organisations in the IT services and consulting industry, when the pandemic hit in 2020, The Access Group struggled to compete for tech talent in a candidate-driven market.

The challenge

The top three challenges for the Access Group were hiring quality software engineers who had experience working with relevant tools and technologies, interview engagement, and overall team bandwidth.

With only a small in-house tech recruitment team, a significant amount of time was spent reaching out to, and qualifying passive talent. The majority of those who responded did not have the relevant technical expertise or were mis-matched on salary expectations. As well as this, candidate's knowledge of The Access Group was often minimal, so additional time was spent driving engagement towards the company’s product offering and company culture, in order to compete with other tech employers.

Due to company growth, the team were managing an increased number of software developer and quality assurance vacancies. In a market where the average cost per tech hire can be as much as £15,000 via external sources, they searched for a solution that would provide a positive return on investment, without adding an extra burden on their day-to-day.

The solution

After successfully hiring three software developers during a 30-day trial, hackajob naturally formed part of the recruitment team’s daily workflow to engage with pre-vetted, active tech talent, which matched the Access Group’s vacancies based on salary expectations and technical skill-set.

The team found they were having increasing numbers of valuable conversations with candidates who had already accepted their invitation to interview, and had some prior knowledge of the company.

Rather than spending up to 50% of their working week reviewing irrelevant applications, coordinating interviews, and sourcing and pre-vetting passive talent, they now had the time and freedom to focus on other responsibilities such as improving and streamlining their interview process.

This, and reduced sourcing time combined, resulted in the Access Group being able to progress candidates through their interview process more quickly and efficiently than they had seen, prior to using hackajob. A lower time to hire also contributed to increased interview engagement, with fewer candidates choosing to progress forward with other employers.

Success

The Access Group no longer has to spend time sourcing tech talent. Instead, they have access to a greater pool of active candidates, and a consistent interview pipeline for their software developer and QA positions.

In a one year period, The Access Group, reduced their average cost-per-hire to £980, with an 85% acceptance job offer acceptance rate for hackajob candidates. The Access Group went from 0% of tech hires being from hackajob, to an average of 60% of tech hires coming from the platform.

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Testimonials

Julian Cheng

Lead Talent Acquisition Partner, Sky Betting & Gaming

With hackajob you are getting quality over quantity. Candidates are pre-vetted, and match to what we’re looking for. It’s easy to engage with candidates, schedule interviews, and I love the breakdown of technical skills on candidate’s profiles. The platform has become part of our daily routine, as it only takes a few minutes every day to clear your new matches. We’ve got loads of success stories, and we’ve already made several hires in the short time we’ve been using the platform. The technology space is extremely competitive, and we’re matching with candidates we’ve never seen before.

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