Mater is a values-led organisationorganization run by values-led people who care for more than 500,000 patients each year. Founded in 1906 to offer compassionate services for the sick and those in need, Mater has since established itself as a market leader in Australian healthcare. But delivering the best healthcare services requires a top-tier talent strategy.
Mater has been using the PageUp ATS to centralisecentralize its recruitment activities since 2019, which means its talent acquisition team had years of accurate, in-depth recruitment data to draw from. The focus now was leveraging these insights to allow Mater to compete in a tight talent market.
Their key goals? Proactive recruitment, engaging internal stakeholders, and strengthening Mater’s employer brand.
A proactive pivot
In a tight labour market, many organisationsorganizations are experiencing the pinch from low application volumes. Mater was no exception —but Director of Talent Georgie Fisher saw this as an opportunity.
Fewer, but higher-quality applications —when paired with proactive sourcing strategies —could drastically reduce recruitment time and costs.
Fisher and her talent acquisition team identified healthcare professionals as one of the fastest-growing groups on LinkedIn. So they invested in LinkedIn Enterprise to list all jobs in one central forum.
“In just six weeks, we improved LinkedIn as a source of hire from 3% to 20%! PageUp metrics enabled us to demonstrate this return on investment, while we continue to optimiseoptimize this channel and build a business case for additional investment.
– Georgie Fisher, Director of Talent, Mater
Better yet, using LinkedIn for recruitment marketing and promoting Mater’s Employee Value Proposition (EVP) has delivered more boomerang candidates and referrals.
In building on this proactive strategy, the team is also using PageUp to centralisecentralize recruitment advertising and build talent pipelines.
“By creating one talent pool for a department —such as administration —and having one recruiter managing applications, hiring managers can collaborate. Candidates no longer receive multiple interview invitations from separate departments. Talent pools also enable us to share permanent role opportunities with our casual workforce.”
By developing in-depth candidate personas and leveraging PageUp technology, Mater’s talent acquisition team is automating recruitment, while maintaining a personalisedpersonalized experience.
“In recruiting healthcare professionals, the messaging we use for nurses is different to what we use for doctors and physios. The more personalisedpersonalized we make our ads, the more candidates we receive who are aligned with our organisationorganization and purpose.”
– Georgie Fisher, Director of Talent, Mater
Creating shortcuts to “yes”
Like many organisationsorganizations, declining offer acceptance rates presented another costly challenge for Mater.
Centralising recruitment data through PageUp was the first step for Fisher and her team to identify the root cause: delays in sending offers.
To improve their time to hire, they designed a two-pronged approach —engaging hiring managers and improving the candidate experience.
Strategic conversations with hiring managers allowed recruiters to fully understand their needs, develop accurate yet creative recruitment briefs, and present solutions.
“For example, in many cases, we discovered less-experienced candidates were a great fit. Solutions like this have the added benefit of improving our overall employee engagement, retention, and succession planning.”
By becoming strategic partners for hiring managers, Mater’s talent team could then create a personalisedpersonalized, high-touch candidate experience. PageUp’s data insights allowed them to target their messaging and reduce unsuitable interviews and assessments, to secure high-quality candidates faster, and to strengthen Mater’s employer brand.
Winning a critical talent segment
Graduates are a critical source of talent for Mater. But in this competitive market for talent, graduates were often juggling multiple offers from other hospitals. Mater needed to ensure its recruitment process would stand out from the crowd.
Could experimenting with the timing of offers have an impact?
Yes. And the results were surprising.
Using data insights drawn from PageUp’s ATS, Mater could demonstrate offers made later yielded the highest acceptance rates —with one important caveat.
“The key is keeping grads engaged, supporting them with their needs, and being available for them to ask questions throughout the process —these touchpoints have a huge impact,” says Fisher.
“The other benefit is that we only need to keep them engaged for a short period before their start dates.”
Mobile-first
PageUp research reveals up to 25% of candidates apply via mobile. So it’s no surprise that when mobile applications are too long or frustrating, application rates drop off.
With more and more candidates demanding seamless, consumer-grade mobile experiences, a mobile-optimisedoptimized application process was top of mind for Mater. The talent acquisition team worked closely with PageUp to achieve this.
“Because of the nature of our roles, we require thorough applications. But PageUp’s conditional questions streamline the process. It also tracks where candidates first learned about our roles. Opportunities like this to ensure we have up-to-date hiring metrics are so important.”
– Georgie Fisher, Director of Talent, Mater
Gaining buy-in from the top
As Fisher confirms, data alone won’t win buy-in from leadership. But it does provide her and her team with talking points to shift their TA strategy, in line with Mater’s wider organisationalorganizational goals.
“We’ve found the best way to gain leadership buy-in is by contextualising our recruitment data and telling a story,” Fisher explains. “By leveraging data, we can work backwards from the outcomes we’re trying to achieve.”
“We’re so lucky to have PageUp data! It allows us to have strategic conversations, match metrics to our goals, and achieve the best recruitment outcomes.”
– Georgie Fisher, Director of Talent, Mater
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