How EDF Fills 400+ Roles Per Recruiting Season

Key takeaways:

• EDF (UK) routinely hires hundreds of new grads per cycle, and the team wanted to ensure every candidate got a great experience. 
• The recruiting team began using a major video interview platform, but found it difficult to use and cost prohibitive for the value it offered. 
• EDF switched to Willo after realizing how easy it was to use; now they’ve cut recruiter admin time in half, increased confidence in hiring decisions, and improved the candidate experience. 

A growing graduate talent program

EDF (UK) has always hired students for new grad roles, industrial placements, and through its apprenticeship programs. Over the years, that need has grown as the energy provider specializing in nuclear and renewables continues to serve more homes in the UK; Hollie Powell, a Recruitment Business Partner for EDF’s UK operations, handles the entire early careers process.

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“Our graduates will be on rotation across all different business units, getting a flavor of what it is that they want to do,” said Hollie.

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With over 45 different open roles and a directive to hire over 400 early careers employees each cycle, Hollie needed a powerful solution that would enable collaboration between her in-house Recruiters and recruitment process outsourcing team that EDF partners with. 

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While researching solutions, Hollie felt video interviewing would be the right solution for them; it would replace the phone screen stage, ideally turning a 30-40 minute task into a 10 minute task. The EDF team tried out a major platform, but it never quite fit for their needs and the price was getting prohibitive for the value it offered.

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“We have a complex recruitment team with both in-house and outsourced team members,” said Hollie. “We needed a platform that was easy to use and would integrate with our systems.”

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After switching to Willo, the team was able to cut recruiter admin time in half. The result was a far better candidate experience, since Recruiters had more time to invest in candidates and could get to confident hiring decisions faster.

How EDF uses Willo to save time and improve candidate experience

Hollie said the team was always willing to invest time to find the right candidates. However, it became an issue for the five-person outsourced team and four-person in-house team when the organization received thousands of applications in one hiring cycle. 

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“Getting over 17,000 applications is absolutely fantastic for us,” said Hollie. “But equally from a resource perspective, it can be really challenging.”

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Despite their existing platform not fitting their needs, Hollie still felt that video interviews were great because it offered candidate flexibility, something that was very important to the team. So she looked for a new solution that would save time for everyone involved and chose Willo.

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Saving time and money

After trying out the Willo platform, she realized how well the platform works and how easily the platform integrates via direct API connections or Zapier and Integrately.

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“Willo is very, very easy to use and the cost worked for us,” said Hollie. “It’s efficient, it’s easy, and the support is there. It’s really refreshing.”

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After implementing Willo, Recruiters saw their admin time drop in half. This was a huge time savings for EDF, said Hollie. Previously, Recruiters would spend 30-40 minutes on calls with more time for note taking. Now, the team is able to watch candidate responses and take notes in under 20 minutes per candidate.

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Improving candidate experience

Candidate experience has always been a priority for EDF (UK). With the previous platform, Hollie said Recruiters spent a lot of time just trying to figure it all out; that led to a lot of wasted time.

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With Willo, that’s all changed. Now that the team has cut admin time in half, they have more time to invest in in-depth candidate interviews. Further, spending less time on admin work means the team can make hiring decisions more quickly, resulting in a better candidate experience. 

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“You can give greater candidate experience if they're not trying to work out how to use a system that's overly complicated,” said Hollie. “And everything that we've used in terms of Willo gives us that opportunity.”

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Hollie also wanted to give candidates flexibility to respond to interview questions in a way that worked for them. In the past, this meant manual accommodations from the team. With Willo, the team turned on the option for either video or audio responses to each question, giving candidates the ability to choose which option was best. 

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“We're very well aware that it can be quite scary looking at yourself on a screen,” said Hollie. “And we also had to think about any candidates with any neurodiversities, or if we’ve got any candidates who need additional support. We don't want to make that choice on behalf of the candidate, we want to be inclusive of their needs.”

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Saving even more time

Now that the team is comfortable with Willo’s platform, Hollie is looking for even more ways to save time on screening while ensuring no candidate falls through the cracks. And the good news is there are a lot of opportunities to test new processes; when Hollie is done with one hiring cycle, she immediately starts prepping for the next. It’s all part of continued EDF (UK) growth and Hollie’s dedication to delivering a great candidate experience. 

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“Our requirements have doubled in the past two or three years,” said Hollie. “And we will continue to see growth in this space. So we just keep going. The thing I love most about Willo is that it’s simple; it does what it says it will and doesn’t overcomplicate things.”