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How do you create a digital experience for a young target audience that is constantly online? To serve this demographic, Talent this way opted for a portal. We spoke with contract advisor Franciska Westenborg and marketer Rogier de Keiser, who were at the helm of this transition.
Orienting on the job market
Talent this way helps students find the best internship. "Talent this way is a platform where organizations can post internship vacancies and where students can find an internship. Talent this way originally started as Mediastages. Since Mediastages focused on the creative industry, it needed a broader name, which became Talent this way," explains Franciska.
Young digital target audience
When Talent this way launched in 2020, the intermediary wanted to excel in the digital experience they provided to their clients and candidates. The standard software they were using, such as an ATS, fell short. For an internship platform, it is crucial that everything runs as simply and digitally as possible for clients and candidates. "Especially when you have such a young, digital target audience as ours," explains Rogier.
"We wanted to excel in the market with a digital experience. When you want an exceptional digital experience, you need more than the standard mix of recruitment technology that most agencies use. At the start in 2020, too much of our work was still manual. For example, clients had to submit new vacancies via email, after which we had to manually enter them into our recruitment system. Our clients couldn't provide all the vacancy details we needed for our website." It wasn't an easy way of working for students either, says Rogier. "Our candidates could apply via the website, but they couldn't look back at their applications and had no insight into the progress of their application process."
Flexible portals
In the search to address this and simplify the recruitment process for both sides, Talent this way found Minggo, software specifically for recruitment portals and apps. "In a short time, Minggo created two portals—one for clients and one for students—that we can edit and personalize ourselves. We didn't want static portals like the ones you mostly see today. We wanted a solution where we hold the reins ourselves and can adjust and improve whenever we want." It was also important that the candidate and client portals were realized quickly, which is not possible with a custom-built project.
Less manual work in the ATS
The portals are a significant improvement for clients and students, explains Franciska. "Via computer or phone, clients and students can manage everything through their own personalized portal." Candidates can update and keep their profile information current in their portal. Furthermore, Talent this way offers its interns a handy overview of all open internship positions. Candidates get more information about the vacancy and the offer on a detail page and can apply immediately. "For us, it's a huge advantage that applications no longer need to be followed up manually. Candidates get an overview of all their ongoing applications in their portal and can immediately track their status. This way, they see right away which vacancy they are being invited to interview for and which application has been rejected. It makes everything very transparent," says Franciska.
It’s not just for the interns that everything runs much faster; many digital steps have also been taken for the client. For instance, after logging in, the client sees a dashboard showing the number of candidates still to be reviewed. Where clients previously emailed all vacancies manually, they can now upload and change vacancies themselves in Minggo. Additionally, the client gets an overview of all proposed candidates, and a personal message can be sent to the candidate directly from the portal.
The portals also save recruiters a lot of time. "The big advantage is that recruiters hardly have to enter any data into the recruitment system themselves anymore, because everything that candidates and clients enter into their portals automatically flows into the ATS. When we used to organize internship fairs and expected around two hundred vacancies, we had to enter them into the ATS one by one. This is now fully automated."
Completely up to date
The focus on the digital experience makes Talent this way unique in its sector. The duo remains ambitious, as the market is constantly evolving and Talent this way wants to stay at the forefront. "In the future, we also want to handle the administrative side of internships and the payment of interns for our clients. For this, the Minggo portals will be further developed so that the client can register the hired intern with us for payroll from within the portal, and the student can upload their internship documents into the portal."
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