Speaker: JANELLE CASEY, UNIVERSITY RECRUITER, FREESE AND NICHOLS
JANELLE CASEY: Hi, my name is Janelle Casey. I'm the University Recruiter with Freese and Nichols and I'm excited to be talking about our Award for Technology Excellence.
Talk briefly about your program and what sparked you to develop it.
JANELLE CASEY: So our team here at Freese and Nichols is fairly new. We started about three years ago. And at that point, they had an internship program but really wanted to grow it and we wanted to grow it as well. So we decided it was time to take a look and see what we could do to do that. So we did look at our availability obviously of talent with plenty of that. We, we already were going to career fairs. However, it, we weren't being very efficient at taking those great candidates and getting them into our system, getting them in front of our managers. So we decided we needed a better way to manage those candidates that we met at career fairs. And so this is what brought in Yello. We decided to look at that. It's great product, something we could take to career fairs, utilize iPads to collect contact information, location and type of work preference for candidates. And it was, it was really a game changer for us. It really made it made a much better candidate experience and it made it much easier for us to move forward more quickly on candidates.
What were you trying to achieve? Did you achieve what you expected?
JANELLE CASEY: So by utilizing Yello we really wanted to target our number of hires. We wanted to increase both our new grad and our intern hiring. And we also wanted to create a better candidate experience with these students we were meeting at various campuses and during career fairs and other events. And I feel like we really did do that. Yello enabled us to capture their contact information in an easy way, it was easy to share that information. We were able to stay in touch with the candidates much more easily. And it also did have a very positive effect on our hires from 2022 to 2023. We had a 58% increase in new grad hires and for interns, it was 34% increase. So we were thrilled about that.
Were there any surprises—any results you weren’t expecting?
JANELLE CASEY: So when we did start our journey utilizing Yello, we did discover some, some really cool surprises that were, were great, very positive ones, actually. Probably the biggest one was the fact that it was very easy to collect the information on the candidates of these events. Both for us and those that were helping us, those we had to train to use the software. It was very easy to learn. You know, it was very, very intuitive. And it made it very easy. In addition to that, a lot of students typically don't have a digital copy of their resume on their phone or in the cloud. So, it was really nice to be able to take a picture with our iPad. We got a really nice clean shot, we're able to read it. And so we had that to use until we were able to reach out to them at a later date and have them attach a PDF copy of their resume to their profile. And then another, I think really good positive aspect was just how easy it was to share these resumes and applications with our hiring managers. We were able to folder all of these students by, you know, what they preferred. If they were looking for an internship or a new grad position, then talk asked them about location preference, work preference. And all of that went into the folder and that way we were able to share them with the manager, the appropriate manager for them to review and decide on whether they wanted to interview them or not. So that was very helpful.
How did you develop this program? What processes did you use?
JANELLE CASEY: So the reason we decided we needed to launch a program such as this was that we are in a very competitive space. We hire a lot of civil and environmental engineering majors and there's not enough of them to go around for all the jobs there are. So we knew we needed to get in front of them quicker and faster and we also need to give them a really great candidate experience to, you know, basically distinguish ourselves from other companies. So we did go through and decide, you know, what are our goals and objectives. Basically, we wanted to increase our hires and also create that great candidate experience. We knew we had stakeholders that we had to bring into the process, our Director of HR, our leadership team of the company. So we went in front of them to tell them, you know, what we were trying to do and we felt that Yello was the best way to do it. Yello gave us that edge in that we were able to collect information on candidates much quicker. Basically, it's a CRM that would hold all of their information for us and allow us to continuously dialogue with them. And we felt like that created a much better candidate experience. And also it allowed us to go faster in screening them, interviewing them, and ultimately making them an offer and hopefully a good thing, a lot of them accepted. So that's how we went through that process.
From your perspective, what was the single most important outcome of this program?
JANELLE CASEY: So from my perspective, I believe that the best outcome on this, this whole program was kind of two-sided. Basically, it was the experience of both our candidates and our hiring managers, our stakeholders here in the company. And then it was also just the fact that we were able to increase our numbers, our hiring numbers, we were able to meet our goals and, and put the company in a good place for new grad hiring.
If someone wants to replicate your program, what do they need to know upfront (the first steps to take, potential pitfalls to watch for)?
JANELLE CASEY: So I think if somebody wanted to replicate this program, some of the things to really watch out for is I think it's really important to have that buy-in from your leadership, from all of your stakeholders, anybody that it affects your hiring managers, anybody at the company that it's going to affect, really needs to know what you're doing and why you're doing it and, and you really have to sell them on that first. On, you know, why this is important, it isn't an investment, it's a big investment. But I think it's really important for them to see what they could gain from this.
