A Drupal Talentsoft module to enhance the candidate user experience within your employer brand universe

Recruitment journeys at the heart of brand concerns

Faced with a tight job market, many companies are taking special care of their recruitment processes to attract potential candidates. Most HR departments use an ATS (applicant tracking system), a SaaS software that allows them to publish all their job offers in one place and manage the various applications. Often integrated into the HRIS, these ATSs offer "white label" access to their interfaces... But these solutions do not enable their clients to customize their candidate UX journeys.

However, a bad experience during the recruitment process is costly! Did you know that one in two people will share a bad experience with others and refuse to apply again? So yes, the candidate experience seriously harms both the company's reputation and, more broadly, the employer brand.

Project context and constraints

Fully aware of these challenges, the Elior Group, a specialist in institutional catering, wanted to offer its candidates an improved experience across all its sites, from browsing job offers to the management and tracking of applications. As a result, the group's HR departments wanted to integrate the application process on the various sites powered by Drupal’s multi-site platform.

The integration therefore had to be multi-site, multi-brand, and multilingual. This was made possible via a Drupal module that connects to the Talentsoft API and handles bi-directional data, without storing any information in the Drupal site databases in question.

The integration also had to incorporate the principles of inheritance and sharing enabled by the multi-site factory, in order to optimize budget performance (common UX journeys across all sites, mobile behaviors inherited from the design work, and equivalent accessibility across the entire platform).

Connecting Drupal and Talentsoft throughout the recruitment journey, from posting job offers to applying

The ATS used by Elior Group is the Cegid Talentsoft solution (formerly Talentsoft), widely used among HR software providers, offering a unified platform to optimize a company’s human resources.

Cegid Talentsoft API: https://developers.cegid.com/apis
The white-label interface offered by Talentsoft:

While job offers can be easily integrated and configured on the different sites in the group, our energy focused on the connected application journey across all the sites, using the methods offered by the Talentsoft API. A project like this allows for optimized and more effective application journeys and interfaces than those natively provided by the Talentsoft ATS.

Relevant architecture: Drupal multisite factory

The Elior Group has a large number of Drupal sites: the group website, country-specific sites, subsidiary sites, blogs, and more. Choosing a "site factory" approach enables efficient architecture to host and manage all these sites. This setup makes it easier, faster, and more autonomous to create, delete, or duplicate sites, thanks to customizable Drupal installation profiles that can be deployed rapidly.

We currently manage 4 installation profiles on the platform:

• A Drupal installation profile for the corporate site - https://www.eliorgroup.com.
• A Drupal installation profile with classic horizontal navigation - e.g. https://www.ansamble.fr or https://www.elior-services.fr.
• A Drupal installation profile allowing the deployment of various editorial blogs - e.g. https://foodforgood.eliorgroup.com, https://mag.elior-services.fr, https://bon-et-bon.elior.fr or https://vidasaludable.serunion.es.
• A Drupal installation profile with a side menu, mainly used by Elior’s country-specific sites (this profile is currently being redesigned) - e.g. https://www.elior.fr, https://elior.co.uk, https://www.elior.it, etc.

Project scope

Our involvement was focused on:

• Designing an improved UX experience for the entire online recruitment process;
• Designing UI mockups, based on the UX design, for each site type;
• Updating the design systems for each site model;
• Developing and mastering the Drupal connector for the TalentSoft API;
• Developing and integrating, for each site model, the registration and login process for candidates to access their accounts;
• Developing and integrating, for each site model, the candidate profile page, list of applications and related features (data download, pausing application, deactivation, alerts);
• Developing and integrating, for each site model, the application journey to apply for a job offer;
• Developing and enhancing, for each site model, the journey for searching and browsing job offers;
• Developing a redirection engine to distribute job postings on the relevant brand sites, in addition to publication on eliorgroup.com.

Out of scope:
Processing email alerts and transactional emails—these functions fall within the scope of TalentSoft.

Features inherited from Talentsoft’s operation:

• Job search (role, contract type, working hours, sector, location, and search radius);
• Creation of a candidate area account;
• Saving a search;
• Adding a job offer to a candidate’s favorites;
• Ability to apply for a job offer;
• Entering the candidate profile for use in all applications;
• Suggestions for equivalent job offers during a candidate's search;
• Tracking an application in the candidate area;
• Downloading user data to ensure a right to data portability;
• Deleting an account.

UX improvements: issues and solutions provided

Several issues were identified on the candidate portal provided by Talentsoft.

First, a redirection problem. Indeed, by clicking on the “Apply” area from the Elior Group site, candidates were redirected to a completely different site: Talentsoft, whose interface differed from Elior's, thus confusing users.

Next, an issue with the length of the user journey when applying for a job. While candidates prefer quick and simple processes, HR departments want to collect as much data as possible—which means lots of mandatory fields to fill in.

To balance everyone’s interests, we proposed making only four fields mandatory to apply for a job, but also implemented a number of incentives (by email and on-site reminders) to encourage candidates to complete their profiles.

Overall, a major simplification of the user journey and modernization of the interface design was carried out. This work was done for every site profile—a breath of fresh air for the employer brand!

Bypassing the technical limitations of the Talentsoft API

Talentsoft comes with constraints and limited flexibility. We therefore had to rethink things in order to combine the new user experience and Drupal.

Concretely, we established a three-way working process with Elior and Talentsoft, and then carried out:

• A study of the API and of the methods to be used;
• A Q&A exchange with Talentsoft;
• A joint feasibility study from the mockup design stage through to user journey and specifications.

Faced with the different limitations we encountered, we also had to be proactive in finding solutions.

Examples of problems encountered and solutions

• Retrieving job offer search filters:
  We had a problem retrieving job search filters in real time. To address this, we proposed saving them in the Drupal cache and setting up a daily update.
• Autocomplete for the job location field:
  We encountered an issue with the “Location” field autocomplete in job searches. Talentsoft does not provide intelligent location recommendations when the user fills in the field (the method only offers calculation by latitude, longitude, and radius). To compensate, we used the adresse.data.gouv API, which lists all addresses in the country, and the Drupal module we developed during a previous project. The module allowed us to send the correct latitudes and longitudes back to the Talentsoft API.
• Availability of all data in a single call:
  Not all information for job offers was available in a single call, especially sector and job image. To address this, we implemented a page in the back office that allows admins to manage one image per sector.
• Saving searches and alerts in the candidate’s account:
  We pooled different methods to make searches identifiable and allow alerts to be displayed in the candidate account.
• Configuring cross-content in the job offer detail view:
  No Talentsoft method allows for this functional need. We had to use Drupal taxonomy as an intermediary to display similar offers.
• Setting up a custom redirection module:
  This Drupal module can identify the origin of the candidate journey in order to redirect them to the appropriate brand website URL.

Screenshots of the candidate space on 3 site models:

We now have a 'turnkey' Drupal module

We now have a deployable Drupal module connected to Talentsoft, with an attractive user interface and experience.

If you use the Cegid-Talentsoft ATS, we can therefore meet your need to integrate these journeys on your Drupal site, applying your design system or brand universe to your website. Contact us if you’re interested in this kind of integration… If you want to take better care of your candidates and your recruitment department…

Go-live: 04/12/2023
Examples of relevant site URLs:
https://www.eliorgroup.com/fr/candidats/france/liste-offres-emploi
https://www.elior.fr/nous-rejoindre/liste-offres-emploi
https://www.elior-services.fr/nous-rejoindre/liste-offres-emploi

Useful links:
2022 Candidate Experience Barometer
https://developers.cegid.com/apis