The recruitment team have been working through a Recruitment Improvement Plan over the last few months with the result of improving time to hire and the experience of the process for both the applicant and the recruiting manager.

As part of this plan we are poised to switch to a state-of-the-art tracked process used by more than 200 trusts across the country.

It includes the whole process through from logging the vacancy, advertising, shortlisting, interviews, daily reminders to applicants via text and email, sends conditional and unconditional letters, logs all employment checks and uses eDBS.

Accessible to all recruiting managers, it includes a traffic lights system which shows where delays are occurring and allows visibility of the vacancy or an applicant in the process and aims is to reduce the time to hire.    The ‘Working For Us’ section of our website will also receive an overhaul as part of the new package.

Rachael Pierce, heading up the recruitment project, said: “We have already made significant progress reducing our time to hire from 21.6 weeks to 16 weeks - but this will further enhance how we work and, should remove some of the frustrations."

Recruitment is currently handling around 300 applicants in our process and we are aiming to have a process which brings us closer to the national average time to hire of 13.5 weeks.  In some instances, due to the complexity of the existing process this has been taking much longer at CHFT.

From February 2017 the ‘Recruitment and Selection – Using Values Based Assessment Tools’ HR Course, will also include training on NHS Jobs and the move to the new system TRAC.