Tech watch

Each quarter, we highlight the top products to look out for in the fast-moving world of project software.

Vacancy Filler

Vacancy Filler is an online recruitment tool that helps project and human resources teams recruit additional staff when needed – either for individual projects or permanently.

Overview

This cloud-based online recruitment software aims to streamline the recruitment process for both candidates and recruiters in project and programme management.

There are two versions of Vacancy Filler. The first is the recruitment platform, which is used by a wide range of organisations across a variety of sectors – such as government, retail, education and not-for-profit. Second is the latest product, Vacancy Filler RPO software, which is aimed at in-house recruiters or outsourced teams undertaking large-scale, volume recruitment.

By using the software, projects can automate the recruitment and on-boarding process. Candidates in the recruitment process are trackable, and the software is fully collaborative between all areas of the business. It also gives consultancies the ability to automatically post vacancies to a large number of jobs boards, eliminating the need for expensive advertising.

It also offers automatic communication with candidates; an option for conducting video interviews; ‘on-boarding’, where employment contracts are generated automatically and everyone on the project is automatically notified that a new recruit will be joining; and communication via SMS and email.

Vacancy Filler includes a facility for the recruiter and hiring manager to share, collaborate and rate each candidate online for shortlisting through to the point of hire. These time-saving functions can reduce the days-to-hire by up to 70 per cent.

User review

“Using the Vacancy Filler system, as project team members start to apply, CVs are automatically captured and the data is extracted to create a system-formatted copy. Relevant information is pulled from each CV and displayed in a consistent format for ease of shortlisting and presentation.

“Viewing CVs is quick and easy, and the fact that it tells you when you viewed the details of a particular candidate is good as well.

“At the same time, the system identifies and highlights role-specific key words, which is a useful aspect of the tool. Since adopting the Vacancy Filler platform, we have advertised more than 130 roles – including several project management roles – and processed over 11,300 candidates.

“The interface looks great and also gives really helpful, detailed reports on each campaign, in terms of how many applications you have received, which advertising route is the most effective, and so on.

“The system is straightforward and easy to use. Thanks to the comprehensive advertising capabilities the software offers, we have seen definite cost savings, as we have not had to use recruitment agencies.”

Roz Salihiano is recruitment manager for design and build contractor Ardmore Group

User review

“Before we adopted the Vacancy Filler platform, applicants would send their CVs by both email and post and we would try to automate the process by holding all applicant details on Microsoft SharePoint. While this approach centralised the data, it was clunky. We realised that we needed a system to automate the process as well.

“We chose Vacancy Filler because it was easily accessible and easy to use. The process is now automated so that when we create a job advertisement, it is automatically posted to both our careers page and onto the general and specialist jobs boards, such as for project management roles.

“There are one or two more features that I would like to see on Vacancy Filler, such as a small feature to post the advert onto our careers page first, for a day or two, prior to posting onto the jobs boards – this would allow us to promote a vacancy internally first.

“While we still use agencies occasionally, we are getting a great deal more traffic to our site than before. This helps to promote our brand, and is also important for marketing to universities.”

Mark Smith is HR manager at materials technology consultancy Lucideon

Which products and gadgets are you using? Get in touch and let us know which project management tools you have tried and tested. Email editor@project-journal.co.uk.