Montessori Beginnings simplifies hiring and improves candidate quality with SmartMatch

The overview

Montessori Beginnings, an early childhood education provider with 10 centres across Victoria, faced challenges finding qualified candidates, particularly in the post-COVID landscape. Using SmartMatch has helped transform their hiring process, allowing them to find quality candidates while significantly reducing their hiring time.

Beyond recruitment, Montessori Beginnings has streamlined its HR and Payroll tasks with the help of Employment Hero by digitising its operations and consolidating multiple systems into one user-friendly platform.

About Montessori Beginnings

Founded in 2018, Montessori Beginnings provides high-quality early childhood education across ten centres in Victoria. Their mission is to help each child reach their full potential, focusing on social, emotional, physical and cognitive development. With a strong commitment to child growth, Montessori Beginnings also greatly emphasises hiring educators who align with their core values and teaching philosophies.

Like many early childhood education providers, Montessori Beginnings faces challenges in finding the right talent, especially since the pandemic. Kayleigh Downes, Portfolio Manager at Montessori Beginnings, shares how she leveraged Employment Hero to enhance candidate quality and streamline recruitment.

Enhancing candidate quality with SmartMatch and reducing hiring time

With a new centre opening in Brunswick, Montessori Beginnings needed help filling positions. Kayleigh shared, “It’s been a challenge since the pandemic. The recruitment landscape has changed significantly. Sometimes, we don’t even get the volume of applicants we need.”

As she explained, “last year at one of our centres, we couldn’t generate enough interest. I would put ads out and across a month, we’d get only about 50 applicants, and the quality just wasn’t there. It was incredibly frustrating.”

Kayleigh decided to try Employment Hero’s applicant tracking system (ATS) and SmartMatch for the new Brunswick centre to turn things around. The shift was immediate. “When we opened Brunswick, with the help of SmartMatch, the job openings did really well,” she said.

“SmartMatch gave us a pool of candidates who were qualified and experienced for the role.”

With the help of SmartMatch, Kayleigh has been able to simplify the hiring process by automatically matching with relevant candidates, reducing the time spent screening unqualified applicants.

Kayleigh shared that one of the biggest benefits of using SmartMatch was the improved quality of candidates. Unlike traditional job boards, SmartMatch presented her with candidates who had the right qualifications from the start.

“Normally, when we post a job, about a third of the applicants aren’t qualified and it’s a lot of effort to sift through all of them. SmartMatch saves us a lot of time because it only suggests candidates who fit the role. 

“We’re always looking for ways to improve recruitment and when we started using SmartMatch, our centre managers were pleasantly surprised. She said, ‘All these people are actually good and relevant!”

Now, Kayleigh’s centre managers actively reach out to candidates suggested by SmartMatch, allowing Montessori Beginnings to make quicker and better hiring decisions in a competitive sector.

Streamlining recruitment with Employment Hero

Another perk of using Employment Hero’s recruitment feature is its ease of use.

“Compared to other platforms, the usability of Employment Hero’s recruitment feature is much better. Everything is in one place, you can contact people easily and it’s all linked up,” said Kayleigh.

“It’s a lot easier to keep track of candidates and follow up when everything is integrated in one platform.”

Digitising HR and centralising processes

The shift to Employment Hero hasn’t only benefited their hiring process. Prior to using Employment Hero, Montessori Beginnings faced challenges with disjointed HR and payroll processes.

“Previously, each centre was doing its own rostering with manual sign-ins and outs. The process was very disjointed. Now, with Employment Hero, we’ve centralised everything,” said Kayleigh.

The shift to a centralised system has been a major step in digitising their operations. With Employment Hero, Montessori Beginnings has been able to eliminate manual processes and bring all their HR and payroll needs into one streamlined platform.

“As an organisation, digitising everything has made things so much more visible and easier to manage. Previously, everything was held at individual centres, but now I can see everything I need in one place,” Kayleigh said.

The ability to streamline multiple systems into one was a major consideration for Montessori Beginnings. “When we were shopping around for a platform, one of the big things for us was to minimise the number of systems we used. We didn’t want lots of separate systems, so we’re slowly integrating everything into Employment Hero,” Kayleigh shared.

Easy to use and great support

Kayleigh’s team has also found the HR platform highly intuitive and easy to use. “We use both the HR and payroll platforms and the feedback from staff has been very positive. Everyone finds it easy to navigate and they like using the platform,” Kayleigh said.

As well as the platform’s usability, Montessori Beginnings received support during the implementation phase. “The support we got from the Employment Hero team was really useful. It was a busy time, but the onboarding process was smooth and straightforward,” she added.

The future of employment with Employment Hero

From streamlining and digitising processes to improving the speed and quality of its recruitment process, Employment Hero has transformed how Montessori Beginnings manages their growing business.

Now, Employment Hero has become central to how Montessori Beginnings operates.

“It’s a fundamental part of what we do now. Across the organisation, everyone uses it for something. Whenever we need to implement something new, we always ask, ‘Can we do it on Employment Hero?’ It’s where we automatically go now.”

If you’re looking for a solution to help streamline your hiring process, digitise your HR operations and centralise your systems, Employment Hero’s all-in-one platform may be the perfect solution for you. Connect with one of our business specialists today.