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Case Study: Charles County Public Schools

How Charles County Public Schools Adapted to Pandemic Hiring and Achieves Long-Term Results With Spark Hire Video Interviews

About Charles County Public Schools

Charles County Public Schools serves 27,000 students in 37 schools. The Office of Human Resources works to support the educational objectives of the district by strategically recruiting, hiring, and retaining a highly effective and diverse workforce. Their hiring works to support the educational system by fostering diversity, professionalism, teamwork and respect to provide excellent customer service. These values are driven by values of excellence, diversity, understanding, confidentiality, accountability, teamwork, and integrity.

Goals for Video Interviewing

The COVID-19 Pandemic sparked Charles County Public Schools' interest in video interviewing. Through lockdown, the team needed an alternative to in-person interviews. Hiring managers wanted a method of vetting candidates beyond the usual screening notes from the Human Resources team.

Q&A with Human Resources Specialist, Kevin Howard:

Q:

What inspired you to look into video interviewing? What specific challenges in your day-to-day were you looking to solve with video interviewing?

A:

Charles County Public Schools began to seek out options for interviewing candidates virtually during the pandemic. Spark Hire was recommended and after researching video interviewing platforms, and we were impressed with Spark Hire's capabilities, user-friendly platform, and customer service.

Q:

Did Spark Hire replace a similar tool or is this the first time your team is using video interviewing?

A:

This is the first time that Charles County Public Schools has utilized a virtual platform for interviewing candidates.

Q:

What criteria did you have in mind for a video interviewing solution?

A:

We wanted a platform that was easy to manage and extremely user-friendly for our internal and external users. As a large district, we knew we would be utilizing sharing features to solicit opinions from hiring managers.

Q:

What made you choose Spark Hire as your video interviewing solution?

A:

We picked Spark Hire for several reasons. Most notably was the ease of use of the platform, Spark Hire's customer service, and the platform being the best value for the price.

Q:

What was getting started with Spark Hire like?

A:

The transition to Spark Hire was seamless. The support we received from the onboarding team provided our team with the necessary skills to easily master the platform. As questions arose, we reached out for support and we were always provided with timely and helpful responses.

Q:

How has Spark Hire improved your hiring metrics and process?

A:

Spark Hire has tremendously increased our ability to screen candidates, reduce turnaround time for hiring, and provided administrators greater flexibility during the interview process.

Q:

What was your team’s hiring process prior to using Spark Hire?

A:

Candidates were screened at job fairs by Human Resources, applications were reviewed in our applicant tracking system and in-person interviews were then scheduled.

Q:

How do you get your team members to buy into video interviewing?

A:

Our team accepted the video interviewing platform immediately due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the team has embraced video interviewing as a process that we will continue to use moving forward. The benefits of streamlining recruitment and hiring new staff is really what sold it to our team.

Q:

What was your aha moment — the moment you knew you loved Spark Hire?

A:

During the demo we were impressed with the platform and due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we knew we needed to incorporate it into our process immediately.

Q:

Why should other school districts look into video interviewing?

A:

We believe that Spark Hire assists school districts in creating a more efficient screening and hiring process. In addition, video interviews provide hiring managers the flexibility to view numerous interviews from different locations and times.

Q:

What are three words that describe your experience working with Spark Hire?

A:

User-Friendly, Convenient, Affordable

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