1. The proposal
Kingsley Recruitment required a completely bespoke recruitment website for their online applications. They wanted a design that merged the best aspects of their major national competitors’ sites. They also needed the site to be built on Umbraco, as this was the content management system (CMS) their staff had grown accustomed to. They also required a development agency that would continue to support them while the site was built.
2. The process
The main challenge for this project was developing the advanced search facilities. Kingsley required a categorisation bar for their pre-existing locations. The search bar needed an auto-fill facility as well as the ability to cross-reference job title with location. We then had to supplement the search facility with a filter on the job search page. The filter consisted of location, job title, sectors, salary bands, contract type, and an update button.
Kingsley’s old site had required pre-existing salary bands as the previous developers had used a template. As the business had grown, this had become a nuisance. Salary bands were frequently fluctuating and the client was bound by the parameters that they first set. We built dynamic code within the CMS to make the bands adaptable to manual changes.
The client also had no way of searching for the jobs placed in the CMS. This meant that, as the volume of jobs grew, it became increasingly difficult and time-consuming to locate the desired job. The node we built enabled them to search via a unique job ID. We also created subfolders so we could delete old jobs, something that was not available in the previous system.
We built each facility through ASP.NET, an open-source web application framework. We cloned all the current content and jobs, optimised all-new robot.txt files, and submitted a new sitemap to Google. Once the site went live, we began phase two testing. As the client wanted a fast turnaround and wished to constantly evolve, they purchased a retainer package for maintenance and further development work and began to add new elements to the CMS, such as bandwidth filters, advanced search nodes for applicants, and several other key features that further supported staff efficiency.
3. The results
The resulting platform led to increased efficiency from staff using the site to search for jobs, input new jobs, and examine applicants. It also led to spikes in job applications being sent from customers due to the improved user experience throughout the website. The ease of the search facility and the fact that it was no longer necessary to go back to the home page for new searches meant further cross-selling opportunities arose.