GSF Car Parts

GSF Group is one of the UK’s leading automotive parts distributors, supplying thousands of independent garages throughout the UK and Ireland with parts, tools, garage equipment and specialist training.

GSF Group currently has approximately 2,500 employees following rapid expansion over recent years. As a fast-paced national business, with the ambition to be the best employer in the aftermarket, it thrives on collaboration, communication and innovation.

The Group has two main business areas - Network (180 branches nationwide) and Support Service Centres.

Rethinking the recruitment model

Ashley Marsh, Talent Manager was appointed to lead the GSF Car Parts recruitment operation and manage recruitment through a formalised in-house recruitment function. This included a review of how recruitment was handled to identify any gaps in the candidate journey and to define a recruitment strategy for what improvements could be made.

The project had the backing and support of senior management who wanted to improve efficiencies in its recruitment process, reduce administrative tasks and reflect the brand values to quickly bring in new talent for available roles with transparency across the recruitment process. Greater reporting capability was also a priority.

Recruitment challenges

The reasons for change were multiple bottlenecks and manual/broken recruitment activities that were unmanageable and couldn’t support the Company growth plans.

Drivers for change

1. Manual raising of job requisitions and an inconsistent approach to job approvals resulted in delayed time-to-hire due to miscommunication or assumptions on the status of approvals.
2. Hard to track live jobs reflected in accurate time to hire and time to fill reports.
3. Unable to track job age reports and difficulty for Regional Managers to track live vacancies within regions.
4. Unable to build talent pipelines
5. Lack of formal adherence to GDPR guidelines.
6. Onboarding problems and delays in issuing to candidates, resulting in delaying a digital onboarding approach and having to continue with a manual process.
7. Need to improve candidate experience and consistency of communications.
8. User experience needed to win over branch managers and improve hiring capability.
9. Branding needed to mirror the Company estate under one national brand.

It was identified that as part of redefining a robust in-house recruitment function there was a requirement to change the current ATS system and implement a fit for purpose ATS to improve efficiency by reducing manual administrative tasks. The project scope was to automate manual activity and replace a clunky onboarding process that presented problems when creating and editing contract documents.

“Recruitment was inconsistent and time-consuming and meant we could lose good candidates. We needed to reduce the time to hire and drop off rates and improve the user experience. Candidate experience was poor with little or no engagement in the application process. Candidates had very little communication regarding receipt of an application or status updates and outcomes.” Ashley Marsh, Talent Manager, GSF

GSF had the desire to move quickly to implement the most appropriate talent acquisition software to support the attraction, engagement, recruitment and onboarding of talent to the GSF team. The project was aligned with a total rebrand of the GSF Groups’ estate to transition local trading identities under one national brand - GSF Car Parts.

Implementing the solution

A tender process was undertaken and Eploy was selected as the most appropriate recruitment software solution with excellent customer advocacy and a platform for future growth.
Eploy’s recruitment software would provide an easily configurable platform that could launch over a rapid 4-week cycle with Eploy Quick Launch.

Requirements were gathered using a detailed set of specification templates and documents to enable the build and configuration of Eploy and supporting modules for GSF requirements. The recruitment technology in use includes Eploy’s core ATS & recruitment system, Hiring Manager Portal, Candidate Portal, Onboarding module and Vendor Portal.

The GSF candidate registration and application processes were mapped out into areas of deployment including roles, locations, cost centres and equality & diversity questions. This was approached in a methodical way of the stages a candidate would go through and where different stakeholders interact with the process.

System users were identified for the different interfaces and core system. Hiring Manager user permissions were designed to determine the level of access hiring managers could have, such as access to edit vacancies, view reference collection and access recruitment reports.

These requirements were then replicated in Eploy as part of the configuration phase. This stage was essential to ensure bottlenecks were unlocked and would provide the automation required.

The candidate portal and careers page content was developed in line with GSF’s new brand guidelines to represent GSF cohesively to the outside world and the newly introduced brand.

The candidate communication automation was developed using a consistent tone. This was a major step forward for a consistent approach to candidate engagement never experienced before. The sheer volume of applications meant previously only candidates successful in getting an interview would get a response.

The Eploy implementation team built the recruitment technology to the requirements developed in the initial stage. Eploy was fully tested to ensure the workflow configuration was ready for launch and 4 weeks after starting the project, GSF launched the new approach to recruitment with Eploy.

Supporting the complete recruitment journey

Using the Eploy Hiring Manager Portal, managers across the branch network can raise a vacancy request from a template and submit roles for approval. Rules are set so vacancies require a single-stage authorisation for replacement roles (Divisional Director) and a two-stage authorisation for Increase to Headcount roles (Divisional Director and COO).

Hiring Managers provide interview availability by creating slots and also provide feedback following interviews. They can review candidates and proceed/reject accordingly and also raise an initial offer for the Core Talent team to process. Previously, this involved a time-consuming activity of phone calls to managers in branches, often multiple times to track them down, chasing actions/availability and then phoning candidates. 

The Eploy Candidate Portal provides an improved candidate experience to engage and attract more candidates through a streamlined and on brand recruitment process. Candidates can manage their preferences and keep up to date on the progress of their applications.

GSF are in the final stages of implementing Eploy’s Onboarding Module which improves engagement with new hires. Through several testing phases with live new starters, it has proven that this will transform the previous manual paper process significantly, solving issues when creating and issuing contracts that often resulted in losing candidates who hadn’t received the paperwork or decided not to join GSF due to delays in issuing offers and contracts.

The project has enabled automated vacancy authorisation, job posting to social media, Indeed and Google for Jobs from the core Eploy system, and searching the talent pool to source candidates directly.

GSF now has a platform on which to continually improve and enhance its in-house recruitment function.

Results

“Coming from a situation where our recruitment activities were becoming difficult to manage to a place where we can work collaboratively, delivering on candidate experience, all reflecting the company brand in a matter of weeks is a huge achievement.

“We chose Eploy knowing they could meet challenging deadlines and work with us in partnership.

“Eploy has a comprehensive core recruitment platform and portal system for Hiring Managers, Candidates, Onboarding and Vendor management. The Hiring Manager Portal and the support this provides were key to getting buy-in from our Hiring Manager community.

• Achieved a stretching deadline to deliver a 4-week implementation and a platform for future growth.
• Demonstration of business partnership across the organisation and with Eploy. From executive support and the brand communications team, all were aligned to deliver the project throughout the relevant stages of deployment. 
• Collaboration and clear roles and responsibilities. The team now has a clear structure and accountability and is recognised as a value-add service to the business. As a result of the project and newly formed recruitment function, a further two roles have become part of the recruitment team to support North and South recruitment activities.
• Hiring manager engagement and autonomy are improved. Hiring Managers can raise vacancies, review applications, create interviews, raise a draft offer and request and send for authorisation. No longer having to make multiple calls to track activity has freed up time across the branch network and provides full transparency with a dedicated recruitment system.
• GSF now has a function and process to review applications and move candidates through the recruitment workflow, consistently and without delay. This is resulting in a better candidate experience and a smoother process.
• Fit for purpose application process. There is one standard application form but other questions now populate if specified in the vacancy e.g. If Heavy Lifting questions or Driving questions are required to be completed.
• Internal vacancies and applications are now handled differently from external vacancies and are fed to the corporate intranet. Prior to this, there was no differentiation.
• The careers page and candidate portal are separate from the retail site and is situated on the main corporate site to avoid confusion. You can navigate to the dedicated career pages seamlessly with unified branding from the corporate site for continuity.
• Agencies and Vendors are also involved in the automated process using the Eploy Vendor Portal. Duplicate candidate checking is done based on the candidate first name, surname and postcode.
• GSF has visibility of all recruitment activity through the extensive dashboards in Eploy. Any data captured through the process can be viewed and reported on to understand delays in the process or areas for improvement. The granularity of the data and reporting is shared with the wider business. Divisional Heads can now access reporting and liaise with branches should action be required.
• Powerful reporting dashboards to understand agency spend, internal v external hires, gender ratios of hires/role types and the source of candidates are in use with complete flexibility to develop and customise all recruitment performance.
• Candidate communications have been significantly improved at each stage of the process and encourage candidates to join the talent pool.

• In the next phase, GSF is looking to enhance the careers pages to further improve the candidate journey through additional candidate-centric content, building on the company values. Integration with iTRENT is an opportunity to automate moving new starters from our ATS into iTRENT, removing the need for manual data entry.