How CGT accelerated their hiring process by 31%—without sacrificing experience
Have you ever taken a minute to think about what all of these different elements are made of? They’re pretty much all leather, right?
Wrong. And you’d actually be surprised about how few features within cars are made from leather these days. That’s because the materials that are used are so good, you automatically think they’re leather.
Why are we asking you to think about this? Because CGT are coated fabric specialists, and these coated fabrics – that look incredibly leather-like – are one of the materials they happen to produce.
The quality of these coatings is what enables them to produce such a highly impressive end result, which they uphold by employing the best people, who are committed to maintaining these exceptionally high standards.
CGT say their ‘family environment’ is a key success factor. When you join their team, it’s as though you’ve joined your own family business.
So what does that look like in reality?
When we caught up with Leslie Johnson, CGT’s Human Resources Director, and Amanda Harrison, their HR Generalist and in-house recruiter, they told us:
“Every week we do something to show our team how much they matter to us. For instance, this week, we celebrated National Coffee and Homemade Cookie day. And last week, the leadership team prepared ‘happy meals’ for everyone – we grilled hot dogs, packaged them up, put stickers on them with smiley faces, and delivered them.”
Challenges: Time lost on admin and lack of support
CGT invests a lot of time in showing their team just how much they appreciate them. But in early 2020, they found too much of their time was being taken up managing their Applicant Tracking Software (ATS).
Leslie explains: “We couldn’t get someone to answer a question for the life of us. If we had a problem there was no one to call. When it came to billing, it was never right. It was always back and forth and there was absolutely zero support.”
Amanda adds: “They were really stagnant, and nothing was changing with them, so we decided we had to start looking elsewhere.”
As they began to evaluate the market, they discovered that things had come a long way and they were missing out on a whole bunch of features available in more modern recruitment tools. For example, when it came to scheduling interviews, they were still reaching out to every single candidate manually, which was extremely time consuming.
Solutions:
Responsive improvements
“Pinpoint offered most of what we wanted and the things they didn’t have at the start were quickly implemented. I love that—Pinpoint is changing with the times and features like the new Zoom integration are amazing.”
The team at CGT benefit from the new features and improvements that are constantly being developed within Pinpoint. There’s a new texting module they’re making great use of, and there are constant updates, which CGT say, ‘have truly been a blessing.’
“It’s almost as if we think ‘hey, it would be cool to have this feature’, and shortly after, it’s just there. It’s not like we’re asking you for it – it just magically happens to appear,” explains Amanda.
From in-person to virtual tours
Choosing a new ATS that’s constantly evolving with the times was a good move when COVID-19 had recruitment moving faster than ever before—especially for a company where in-person tours of their facilities are a key part of the screening process.
Pinpoint responded quickly to the changing environment by delivering new tools to help with remote hiring. These include integrations with popular video platforms like Zoom, and improvements to existing hiring team collaboration tools, such as scorecards, and messaging.
Leslie explains: “It’s been a challenge because nothing is going to replace the in-person, small feel of a tour. Now we’re doing all of our interviewing completely virtually and the only time we get someone on site is for a tour of the facility at the end. That’s a step we still don’t feel can be missed. We looked at the possibility of trying to do a video or something like that, but it just doesn’t show you what we do.
“And there have been a lot more texts, a lot more phone calls, and we’ve also automated a lot of our onboarding with our HRIS as well.”
World-class support
However, despite being highly impressed by Pinpoint from the outset, CGT had some reservations about switching to a new ATS because they wanted to be sure they were selecting the right one.
“I didn’t know anyone that had used Pinpoint before. Plus, they’re based in another country and we wanted responsive customer service. They were our biggest concerns,” explains Amanda.
“But it’s worked out well, the support experience is more than I actually thought I’d be getting. I use the live chat, and there’s no waiting on it. It’s a great experience and we really love talking to Pinpoint – they have clients all over the world and I’m talking to people who have a different worldview and share different opinions so that’s exciting as well.
“And beyond that level of service, we wanted to work with an organization that would be on the cutting edge, but was established enough that it would have longevity. Pinpoint ticks this box too.”
More efficient workflows
With a blended HR and recruiting team there’s always plenty to be getting on with.
Since switching to Pinpoint, CGT is saving a huge amount of time on admin that can be reinvested elsewhere, including offering candidates a better experience.
“One of the biggest things is it’s a very modern, very clean platform, which fits well with our image as a business,” concludes Leslie.
“I think the [interview] scheduling feature in Pinpoint is phenomenal – it saves time that we’re able to devote to other functions. Pinpoint has definitely given us the opportunity to spend more time on some of our other functions because the recruiting piece is all being taken care of.”
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