COMPANY PROFILE

Founded in 1952, Compassion International is the world’s largest Christian child development organization, serving more than 1.2 million children in 26 of the world’s poorest countries. This nonprofit organization works through local churches to holistically address the individual physical, economic, educational, and spiritual needs of children. Compassion has been awarded ten consecutive, four-star ratings by Charity Navigator, America’s largest charity evaluator.

THE CHALLENGES

With more than 900 U.S.-based employees, plus 1,500 more employees worldwide, Compassion International has grown rapidly. Before UltiPro, different locations within the nonprofit used a combination of manual processes and in-house solutions for its payroll and HR management. The different systems that handled talent management functions, such as recruiting and hiring, were inefficient and time-consuming. The global organization needed to establish streamlined processes to keep up with its brisk pace of recruiting, selecting, and onboarding new employees.

Compassion’s various U.S. regional and international offices tracked and approved recruiting tasks through telephone calls, faxes, spreadsheets, and emails. Manual sorting and reviewing of candidate applications was tedious, and it was difficult to rapidly distribute recruiting information because many employees work remotely.

THE SOLUTION

“With UltiPro, we have automated our recruitment processes and leveraged built-in workflow to instantly route resumes and applicant information to the right personnel,” said Jared Leffler, human resources system specialist at Compassion International. “The immediate result was a drastically expedited approval and hiring process. This means getting the right talent in place faster and more cost-effectively.”

UltiPro’s Web feature for talent acquisition provides greater visibility into all of Compassion International’s applicant activity. Managers anywhere in the world can review individual applicants and provide the status of their open positions, and HR, recruiting staff, and executives have one central repository to quickly access all candidate information available, review open positions, or see a summary of all job openings throughout the company.

“By allowing decision-makers to quickly and easily review and evaluate the status of each applicant using the Internet, UltiPro streamlines the process considerably,” said Leffler. “Since the economic downturn, we have seen a huge increase in job applications. In addition, our organization has double-digit numbers of positions that need to be filled very quickly. UltiPro enables us to view 100 applicants at a time, evaluate each person’s entire history, and then conveniently send relevant information to the right hiring managers without the delays associated with paper forms.”

UltiPro’s tools for talent management also have improved communication with potential new employees—making it easy to generate automated emails and notifications to candidates regarding their status in the recruiting process. Compassion can automatically let applicants know when a resume has been received, schedule interviews, request follow-up information, and provide updates to qualified candidates throughout the process.

“UltiPro’s recruiting and hiring functionality is extremely valuable. Because we can communicate more efficiently, managers now can participate more in strategic aspects of the process—like interviewing high-potential candidates—rather than spending time on administration and paperwork,” said Leffler. “Overall, UltiPro has helped us not only streamline our recruitment process, but we can more quickly identify the best employees for our organization. Nothing is more important than acquiring the right talent.”