Frank ZupanAs a leading manufacturer of building materials, Associated Materials has unique hiring challenges. We have multiple channels and brands across the United States and Canada. With distribution and manufacturing centers in 48 different states in the United States alone we do not have one target audience – we have hundreds. We need a multi-brand strategy not only to serve the needs of contractors, builders, remodelers, architects and everyone in between, but also to attract the best hires. Our employees range from entry-level positions to C-level and work in a variety of settings from distribution centers, to manufacturing and corporate offices.
The bedrock of our business philosophy is our company vision: Excellence in People, Excellence in Products and Excellence in Operations. The vertical integration of our manufacturing and distribution channels adds not only opportunity to win in certain market segments, but also adds opportunity for individual and team contribution to our business success.
I started at Associated Materials as a consultant, and we had no established method of distributing jobs to the internet (places like Indeed.com, SimplyHired, etc) I came in on a Monday and by Wednesday I had our initial SmartRecruiters site up and running. The hiring managers we set up with SmartRecruiters were ecstatic, there is literally no other way to describe it. We could now see candidates and monitor applicant flow more easily than it had ever been done before. I think this is one of the greatest advantages of SmartRecruiters.
This was just the start, we then modeled additional SmartRecruiters sites to align with our overall business. We have substantial brand affinity with the different products and channels in our business, but very little employment brand to associate or align with that local or regional presence. Distribution centers, manufacturing centers, corporate office all with completely different hiring needs and processes, and each individual location ranging from five employees to over 500! Now we’ve progressed to multiple SmartRecruiters career sites that allow business segments to market their brand and hiring needs in a unique and efficient way. SmartRecruiters allows us to deal with the complexity of hiring across the United States and Canada for thousands of people with remarkable simplicity.
Associated Materials was not my first experience with SmartRecruiters. Early on the SmartRecruiters development cycle, about two years ago, I found them on on Twitter. Since then I’ve seen SmartRecruiters grow into a robust hiring platform. The development of the recruiter marketplace, assessment center, job board options are all signs that this company understands the needs of a business that is hiring. I would imagine there’s a certain challenge in not over complicating it all, but SmartRecruiters has managed to keep it easy. There’s a problem when all of a sudden you’re shaping your hiring process to your ATS. A great software lets you focus on the problem instead of the tool itself.
I’ve been in recruiting a long time, and it’s easy to get wrapped up in the “trends” or what you think “the future of recruiting” may be. To be honest, I don’t think about it much. All I need to know are the needs of my company, and they’re going to be different for everyone. If you keep focused on solving the issues of your business, your business can keep thriving. You want a tool that is adding value, everything else is rubbish.
Frank Zupan is the Director of Talent Acquisition at Associated Materials. Follow him on Twitter for thoughts on HR and Talent in 140 characters or less.
Lee Ann Prescott
