Why HR teams are ditching Seek for Employment Hero’s SmartMatch
Read this case study if
- You’re still posting roles directly to Seek and want to know if there’s a better way
- You’re overwhelmed by hundreds of irrelevant applications and wasting hours screening
- You want real-life examples of HR teams saving time and cost with SmartMatch and Employment Hero’s ATS
Rethinking recruitment: From job board chaos to smart candidate matching
Whether you’re hiring in hospitality, education, tech or community services, one challenge remains the same: sorting through floods of job applicants to find the right fit.
For many businesses, the default is to post straight to Seek or LinkedIn. But more and more HR leaders are switching to integrated hiring through Employment Hero’s Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and SmartMatch and discovering how much smoother, faster and more cost effective it can be.
“We didn’t even advertise” – SmartMatch sourcing in action
Heena Geronimo, Senior Manager of People & Culture at Think Tank Group, described her experience moving from manual hiring to using the full power of Employment Hero’s recruitment tools.
“For the first two years I was here, recruitment was operated manually. I had desktop folders for each job and manually advertised on Seek.”
Heena began using Employment Hero’s SmartMatch solution to solve her recruitment challenges.
“We had a role in WA and I thought I found the candidate through Seek Premium, but turns out she was a double-up as she was also in SmartMatch. And we hired her and she’s a gun.”
Once she understood how SmartMatch worked, Heena began trusting it more:
“Now I don’t even need to advertise to get SmartMatch candidates. They just start to pop up. We made a successful placement with someone from SmartMatch, so I’m definitely going to give it more attention. We don’t pay extra for it, whereas we do for Seek Premium.”
“Out of 180 applicants, only one was worth interviewing”
Heena spoke to a common pain point among all four HR leaders interviewed: irrelevant applications and hours spent manually screening.
“The finance roles we advertised were out of control. We received over 200 responses for each one. For the one finance role, we got 180 CVs and only found one candidate worth interviewing.”
That’s where SmartMatch offered a clear time-saving benefit.
“We had a strong candidate come through SmartMatch. We’re finding that SmartMatch has a good understanding of what we look for. So now when I create a job, I’ll give it more attention.”
Saving money and avoiding ad fatigue
Shan Butler, HR Business Partner at YMCA Northern Territory, faced a different challenge: a tiring recruitment process that lacked the benefits of an efficient recruitment system, while continuously posting costly advertisements to Seek to attract the same pool of candidates.
“We now post all our jobs through Employment Hero and grant multiple hirer access to our managers and recruitment panel members. We’re loving and really maximising the custom questions we can attach to positions and link through to Seek. It saves us so much time analysing and ranking candidates.”
The organisation had previously purchased a five-figure Seek ad package, which Shan said ran out within a few months.
“For some roles, we skip paid job boards and just post on Employment Hero’s job board and our website. SmartMatch helps us to analyse the current market and assist in seeing what local talent is available, saving thousands in advertising fees.”
Moving fast and staying organised with Employment Hero’s hiring tools
One HR administrator and internal recruiter experienced similar challenges of juggling LinkedIn and spreadsheets, before switching to Employment Hero and finding a far more efficient way to hire.
“I moved our recruitment from posting directly to LinkedIn, to posting via Employment Hero. When we integrated LinkedIn to Employment Hero last year, our time to hire was 67 days. Since we started posting via Employment Hero and streamlining our processes, our time to hire has dropped to 22 days. The goal was under 40, so I’m happy with that,” she shared.
She also explained how consolidating hiring into one system eliminated scattered processes:
“Before, if someone internally referred a candidate, it was all on Excel. Now I just create a profile for them in Employment Hero and it’s all in front of me. The hiring managers like it too because you can add notes and tag each other on the candidate profile. Especially when you’re calling 50 people, there’s no way I’d remember what I said to everyone. The notes feature is great.”
The bottom line: smarter, faster cheaper hiring
Each HR leader shared different wins, but the message was the same: switching from posting directly to Seek to using Employment Hero’s ATS and SmartMatch has saved time, money and headaches.
- Time to hire: Cut from 67 days to 22 days for one business
- Candidate volume: 180+ applicants per role screened manually now reduced via SmartMatch
- Cost: One company saved thousands by avoiding a fourth Seek ad post
As Heena put it: “The minute I register a job, SmartMatch starts surfacing candidates. We don’t pay extra for it, so why wouldn’t we use it?”
Inspired by these stories? Take control of your hiring with Employment Hero’s ATS and SmartMatch so you can save hours, reduce job board spend and find better talent, faster.
