Recruiting the People Who Make Learning Possible
A Service Design Strategy for Modernizing HR Recruitment
The Calgary Board of Education engaged J5 to understand and improve the experience of recruiting substitute teachers and casual support staff. Working alongside CBE’s Talent Management team, we examined how candidates, recruiters, hiring managers, schools, policies and technology come together across the recruitment journey.
Our research revealed that the challenge was not simply a slow process. Recruitment had evolved into a complex service shaped by manual work, disconnected systems, unclear handoffs and limited visibility for candidates. By mapping the experience from end to end, we helped CBE identify where modernization could reduce administrative effort, improve the candidate experience and enable recruiters to spend more time finding the people who help schools and students thrive.
INDUSTRY
Education
CLIENT
Calgary Board Education
WHY IT MATTERS
Recruitment is about more than filling vacancies. It connects qualified educators and support staff with schools that need them and directly influences the quality and continuity of students’ learning experiences.
Our work gave CBE a clear view of how recruitment operates today and where friction affects candidates, employees and the broader organization. By connecting human needs with operational realities and technology capabilities, CBE has created a practical foundation for modernizing recruitment without losing sight of it’s purpose: ensuring schools have the right people in place to support students.
PROCESS HIGHLIGHTS
We mapped two priority recruitment journeys, from application through screening, interviewing and hiring to show how candidate experiences, employee workflows, systems and policies interact.
We translated seven interconnected problem areas into a prioritized catalogue of 20 opportunities, ranging from immediate improvements to longer-term investments in recruitment technology and service delivery.
Impact
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Candidate Level
Created a clear understanding of the uncertainty, delays and communication gaps candidates experience throughout recruitment.
Identified opportunities for a more welcoming digital front door, clearer application guidance, greater status visibility and more secure ways to submit sensitive information.
Established measures for tracking candidate satisfaction, application completion, offer acceptance and recruitment journey drop-off.
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Employee Level
Revealed how manual screening, fragmented email communication and duplicate data entry consume time that recruiters could spend evaluating and engaging candidates.
Identified that recruiters were spending approximately half their process time on manual screening, while as much as 80% of Talent Management activity relied on email.
Surfaced opportunities to simplify workflows, automate routine activities, strengthen handoffs and give recruitment teams better tools and information for decision-making.
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System Level
Provided CBE leaders with a shared understanding of recruitment as an interconnected service rather than a collection of isolated administrative tasks.
Created a structured investment framework spanning immediate risk reduction, workflow modernization and longer-term improvements to CBE’s candidate experience and employer brand.
Established potential measures for time to hire, recruiter capacity, administrative cost, quality of hire, candidate acceptance and operational risk giving CBE a foundation for prioritizing improvements and measuring progress over time.