YMCA of Greater Seattle increases productivity and adoption with recruitment platform overhaul

Founded in 1876, the YMCA of Greater Seattle is the Pacific Northwest’s leading nonprofit organization, reaching more than 253,000 people with more than 3,000 employees across 13 branches, two overnight camps and more than 200 program sites. In early 2018, the Seattle Y embarked on transforming its HR function over the coming two years, including consolidating the decentralized recruiting efforts of its 300 hiring managers in 13 branches under the corporate office.

To support its new centralized structure, scale with its changing needs, find ways to reduce candidate drop off, and cut down time-to-fill and time-to-apply, the Seattle Y engaged iCIMS’ Premium Success support program to increase platform productivity, drive adoption, and maximize the return on investment.

iCIMS Premium Success provides a higher level of support to organizations with complex and unique hiring needs with a dedicated technical resource, 24×7 support, as well as annual system health checks.

iCIMS Premium Success provides a higher level of support to organizations with complex and unique hiring needs with a dedicated technical resource, 24×7 support, as well as annual system health checks.

To increase recruiters’ productivity and adoption, the support team helped the Seattle Y in several key areas:

1. Improve the mobile application process:
iCIMS found that the majority of applicant drop-off occurred when candidates applied with mobile devices. The Seattle Y improved the candidate experience by removing steps, such as requiring a cover letter and desired salary, and using dropdown lists instead of long, free-text boxes, which are difficult to fill out on a mobile device. In less than four months, completed applications on mobile devices increased from 10% to 23%.

2. Restructure its recruiting platform:
iCIMS overhauled and restricted the hiring manager’s level of access in the platform. While hiring manager login groups were previously organized by location, iCIMS helped the Seattle Y centralize the process and gave all hiring managers the same level of access to candidate information, preventing any compliance issues.

3. Maximise use of integrations to other recruitment and HR solutions:
iCIMS consulted with the Seattle Y to help move away from a manual reference checking process to an automated integration with partner solution, Checkster. With Checkster, the reference checking process is entirely online, saving recruiters up to an hour per candidate. Because of the iCIMS integration, the Seattle Y’s recruiters and hiring managers can see each candidate’s references within their candidate profile, eliminating the need to log in to different systems.