How N Family Club onboards hundreds of people at once while staying Ofsted-ready
Education
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200+
applications per role prioritized with AI
400+
candidates managed in onboarding simultaneously
Automated
role-specific compliance checks
Executive summary
N Family Club has grown from around 20 nurseries to 53 in just four years, with plans to reach 60 by year-end and expand into the US. But scaling recruitment in a highly regulated sector brings its own challenges, from managing hundreds of applications to ensuring every new hire completes the right compliance checks. With Pinpoint, N Family has replaced manual spreadsheets and disconnected processes with a more structured, automated approach to hiring and onboarding. The team can now manage compliance for 250 to 400 candidates at a time, use AI to move through high-volume applications faster, and deliver a consistent, on-brand candidate experience throughout the hiring journey. All while building a recruitment process that can keep pace with the organization's growth.
Industry
Education
Location
UK
Headcount
2500+ permanent and contract
About N Family Club
N Family Club is an early years education group with 53 nurseries across London, the Home Counties, and the West Midlands. Its ambition is to become the highest-quality and most-loved early years education group in the UK. N Family employs around 1,500 permanent team members and 1,000 flexi workers who cover sickness, vacations, and recruitment gaps. As an Ofsted-regulated organization, it operates in a highly regulated environment, supported by internal audits and spot checks. Rae Wood, Talent Acquisition and Onboarding Manager, oversees the recruitment journey from application through to each new starter’s first day.
Why Pinpoint?
As N Family grew, it needed recruitment technology with more structure, clearer rules, and the ability to scale. The platform also had to give hiring managers visibility into their vacancies and candidates, while remaining simple for teams across its nurseries to use. Pinpoint gave N Family that clarity, with an intuitive platform that recruiters and hiring managers could quickly get to grips with and a product roadmap that matched its ambitions. Crucially, Pinpoint also brought onboarding into the same system, replacing spreadsheets and disconnected processes with the structure and guardrails N Family needed to manage complex compliance at scale.
"Pinpoint gives us the structure, visibility, and automation we need to keep delivering a great candidate experience as N Family grows."
Rae Wood
Talent Acquisition and Onboarding Manager
Use Case
1
Using AI to move through high-volume hiring faster
The challenge
Some roles at N Family attract particularly high volumes of applications, with flexi and apprentice vacancies receiving anywhere from 50 to 200 candidates. For a busy talent acquisition team juggling multiple vacancies, reviewing applications, identifying suitable candidates, and keeping the hiring process moving can quickly become time-consuming.
With the high-volume of applications is the additional time it takes to find the right information. Recruiters need to identify relevant experience and qualifications quickly, while returning candidates can mean digging through previous applications to understand their history with N Family.
The team wanted a more efficient way to manage these demands, making it easier to find and act on useful candidate information without having to review every application and piece together each candidate’s history manually.
The solution
To help manage high application volumes, N Family uses Pinpoint’s AI Match Score to surface the information recruiters need to assess candidates, including relevant early years experience, qualifications, and alignment with job requirements. Rather than reviewing every application in the same order, the team can use these insights to prioritize candidates for review, helping them manage busy pipelines and move more quickly on promising applications.
AI Hiring Copilot helps reduce the time spent searching for information. When candidates apply again, recruiters can quickly summarize their previous applications to understand their history without having to piece together past interactions manually. The team can also use AI Hiring Copilot to rediscover candidates already in their pipeline and build reports in the Insights Hub, making it easier to draw on existing candidate information and access hiring insights.
N Family has also trialed One-Way Video Interviews for apprentice roles, with a strong proportion of candidates completing the process. Candidates who progressed shared positive feedback, describing the experience as natural and straightforward.
200+
applications prioritized with AI
Faster
candidate reviews with AI insights
Instant
access to previous application histories
"AI helps us surface the right information at a glance, prioritize candidates, and get back to people much faster."
Rae Wood
Talent Acquisition and Onboarding Manager
Use Case
2
Bringing the employer brand to life throughout the candidate journey
The challenge
N Family partnered with employer brand agency, Creed Comms, to create its employer brand and careers site around "For dreams of all sizes,” a brand essence that reflects the ambitions N Family encourages in its people and the children they support.
That distinctive brand sets an expectation for the experience that follows. N Family needed its recruitment communications to feel like a natural extension of the employer brand Creed had created, including during onboarding, when candidates can spend time waiting for background checks to clear.
The solution
Pinpoint helps N Family embed the employer brand developed with Creed Comms from the careers site into the hiring journey.
The team has customized automated communications in the brand tone of voice, while candidates receive automated live updates as onboarding checks progress alongside personal contact from the team. Candidate surveys are also sent automatically after interviews, giving N Family direct feedback on the experience.
Together, the careers site and recruitment journey give candidates a more consistent experience of N Family’s employer brand from first click through to their first day.
Consistent
employer branding across the hiring journey
Real-time
updates throughout candidate onboarding
Automated
feedback collection after every interview
"Candidates get live updates in our tone of voice alongside personal support from our team, so they always know where they are in the process."
Rae Wood
Talent Acquisition and Onboarding Manager
Use Case
3
Running compliance across hundreds of hires at once
The challenge
Every new hire at N Family must complete rigorous compliance checks before they can start, including an enhanced DBS, right to work, HMRC employment history, and overseas checks where required.
Previously, the team tracked onboarding in a red, amber, and green spreadsheet, with checks managed across different systems and manual processes. This was manageable when N Family had around 20 nurseries and 80 to 100 people in onboarding at a time. But as the business grew to 53 nurseries, that number climbed to between 250 and 400.
With hundreds of candidates at different stages of onboarding, keeping track of outstanding checks and making sure nothing was missed became increasingly complex. N Family needed a more scalable way to manage compliance without adding to the team's administrative workload.
The solution
N Family brought its onboarding process into Pinpoint, connecting background checks through Zinc to give the team one place to manage compliance from offer acceptance through to a candidate's first day.
Instead of relying on spreadsheets and switching between systems, recruiters can now see exactly where every candidate stands through live red, amber, and green status tiles inside Pinpoint. With each team member managing between 50 and 100 candidates, this visibility makes it easier to spot outstanding checks, follow up where needed, and keep onboarding moving.
Automation also helps ensure the right checks happen at the right time. When a candidate accepts an offer, Pinpoint automatically assigns the appropriate onboarding process and triggers the correct Zinc background check package for their role. This removes the need to manually coordinate different requirements and gives the team greater confidence that every candidate completes the necessary checks before starting.
Once onboarding is complete, new starter information flows into N Family's HRIS, HiBob, reducing the need to transfer information between systems and helping create a smoother transition from candidate to employee.
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400+
candidates managed in onboarding at once
Automated
role-specific compliance checks
Centralized
compliance tracking and audit evidence
"Automating onboarding has given us complete peace of mind; we know every candidate is assigned the right onboarding process and checks for their role."
Rae Wood
Talent Acquisition and Onboarding Manager
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