Sydney, Australia & Boston, USA – [Current Date] – LEAP Legal Software, a global leader in cloud-based legal practice management solutions, has demonstrated a transformative impact on its talent acquisition strategy, leveraging the Workable applicant tracking system (ATS) to achieve remarkable efficiencies, including a 100% internal referral rate for its US hires over the past year and significant time savings for its human resources team. This long-standing partnership, now spanning eight years, underscores the critical role of intuitive and innovative HR technology in supporting rapid global growth and fostering a strategic approach to talent management.
LEAP Legal Software, founded over three decades ago in Australia, has evolved into a formidable international presence, serving small law firms across Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. With a global workforce of approximately 900 employees, the company’s expansion necessitated a robust and scalable recruitment infrastructure. In the US, where operations focus on critical support, sales, client success, and implementation roles, the responsibility for all aspects of people, recruitment, and culture falls under the purview of Susanne Poole. Poole, like many HR leaders in fast-growing technology firms, has often navigated the complex demands of managing a high-volume hiring engine, frequently as a singular HR professional. Her experience highlights the imperative for tools that amplify capability and streamline processes.
The Foundational Shift: Addressing Pre-Workable Hurdles
Prior to integrating Workable in December 2018, LEAP’s recruitment efforts were hampered by an embedded module within their existing Human Resources Information System (HRIS). While technically functional, this system proved to be a source of significant friction and administrative burden. Described as clunky and unintuitive, it lacked the automation essential for a rapidly scaling organization. A key deficiency was its inability to automatically disseminate communications to hiring managers, forcing Poole into a perpetual cycle of manual follow-ups and reminders to secure candidate feedback and maintain process momentum. For a lean HR operation, this administrative drag was not only inefficient but unsustainable.
Furthermore, the legacy system offered limited access to job boards, constraining LEAP’s ability to distribute postings widely—a severe handicap for a technology company with ambitious growth targets across multiple international markets. This restriction was particularly acute for a business operating in diverse geographies with distinct talent pools. "I needed our recruitment to be much more efficient and I needed it to be able to talk to the recruiting managers around the business instantly. We struggled with our previous system in doing that," Poole articulated, encapsulating the urgent need for a more agile and interconnected solution.
Strategic Selection: Why Workable Stood Out
In 2018, as LEAP was still very much in its startup phase and experiencing exponential growth, the evaluation of alternative recruitment platforms was a critical undertaking. Budgetary considerations were a genuine factor, which naturally excluded some of the more expensive, larger enterprise platforms. However, the decision process extended beyond mere economics. As a technology company, LEAP sought an ATS that mirrored its own identity: smart, innovative, and inherently intuitive. The chosen platform needed to facilitate widespread adoption among hiring managers across six countries without requiring extensive change management or cumbersome training protocols.
From the initial demonstration, Workable distinguished itself. Its modern interface and comprehensive features resonated with LEAP’s requirements. "Workable felt like it had its finger on the pulse. It spoke to what we needed and it was just smart. And Workable has always really delivered on that," Poole remarked, highlighting the platform’s alignment with their strategic vision. The people search functionality and multi-board job distribution capabilities were particularly compelling, directly addressing LEAP’s need to recruit across different geographies with varied talent landscapes. The ability to seamlessly manage both UK and US hiring from a single, unified platform, eliminating the necessity for parallel systems, was precisely the integrated solution the organization required for streamlined global operations.
A Seamless Rollout: Implementation and Rapid Adoption
The implementation of Workable across LEAP’s diverse global operations was, in Susanne Poole’s assessment, remarkably straightforward. In stark contrast to the often-complex and disruptive rollouts associated with enterprise-level software, Workable’s intuitive design facilitated a smooth transition. Poole provided learning videos to hiring managers and conducted a limited number of workshops to onboard teams, minimizing disruption. At a company employing between 500 and 600 individuals at the time, such a frictionless adoption process is by no means guaranteed. The inherent user-friendliness of the platform proved to be the decisive factor. "People weren’t confused by what we were trying to get out of it. They embraced it quickly. I don’t recall this giving us any hiccups," Poole stated, emphasizing the platform’s accessibility. This rapid and widespread adoption was a direct consequence of Workable’s design philosophy: to create a tool that is effective for seasoned recruiters yet equally approachable for hiring managers who possess full-time responsibilities beyond recruitment and have limited patience for convoluted software. Workable successfully met users where they were, enabling broad organizational buy-in.
Transformative Operational Efficiency: Gaining Back 20 Hours a Week
The most immediate and profound operational impact following the transition to Workable was a significant reclamation of time. During LEAP’s period of accelerated scaling, the sheer volume of manual chasing, reminding, and coordinating feedback necessitated by the old system consumed an enormous portion of Susanne Poole’s work week. The introduction of Workable, with its automated communications, intelligent pipeline reminders, and real-time candidate status updates, virtually eliminated this administrative overhead. "Easily about 20 hours a week back in 2018. There was so much chasing because we didn’t have a system that spoke to everyone and kept everyone honest," Poole confirmed, illustrating the profound relief provided by automation.
This substantial time saving was not merely a reduction in workload; it represented a strategic reallocation of resources. The freed-up hours were redirected towards higher-value activities: a deeper focus on candidate quality, engaging in more strategic hiring conversations with departmental leaders, and proactively building a robust talent pipeline. This shift in focus has been instrumental in enabling LEAP to significantly reduce its reliance on external recruiters across the majority of its role categories, leading to substantial cost savings and greater control over the recruitment process.
A Deliberate Talent Strategy: 100% Referral Success
One of the most compelling outcomes of LEAP’s partnership with Workable is the staggering statistic that, over the past 12 months, 100% of its US hires have been sourced through internal referrals. This figure is not coincidental but rather the direct result of a carefully conceived and executed talent strategy, underpinned by the strengths of LEAP’s existing workforce and seamlessly managed by Workable’s robust referral functionality. Rather than adopting a broad-net approach, inundating job boards with postings and sifting through thousands of applications for operational and support roles, Susanne Poole implemented a highly targeted strategy. This approach prioritizes leveraging the trusted networks of current employees, utilizing Workable to efficiently manage the referral pipeline, and ultimately hiring individuals who come recommended by those who already possess a deep understanding of the organization’s culture and operational nuances.
"To the point where I don’t even post the role on the job boards at the moment. We took a very deliberate approach to do the referral piece," Poole explained, highlighting the success of this focused strategy. The benefits of a referral-centric model are manifold: referred candidates typically exhibit higher retention rates, integrate more quickly into the company culture, and often demonstrate superior performance. For operational and support roles, Workable has consistently facilitated the delivery of highly qualified candidates, entirely circumventing the need for expensive external recruiter engagement. This demonstrable cost efficiency accumulates significantly over time, particularly for a company experiencing steady growth across multiple competitive markets. The elimination of external recruiter spend for these critical roles represents a direct and tangible return on investment from their ATS.
Elevating the Candidate Experience Through Reliability
The journey for candidates navigating LEAP’s hiring process has markedly improved since the implementation of Workable. The platform’s automated messaging system ensures that no applicant, regardless of their eventual outcome, falls through the cracks. Every individual receives timely, professional communication at each stage of the process, a crucial element in a competitive talent market where the candidate experience directly reflects on the employer’s brand. This commitment to reliability ensures that LEAP maintains a positive public image, even with unsuccessful applicants, fostering goodwill and potentially encouraging future interest.
A feature that Susanne Poole particularly champions is Workable’s self-scheduling functionality. This tool eliminates the cumbersome back-and-forth typically involved in coordinating calendars across multiple stakeholders and candidates. Instead, applicants are empowered to select interview times that align with their own schedules, streamlining the process significantly. "Self-scheduling is brilliant. It connects your calendar, you push it out to candidates, they pick a time that suits them. It stops so much unnecessary back and forth. It is a huge time saver and it always works," Poole enthusiastically shared. This efficiency not only accelerates the hiring timeline but also conveys a sense of respect for the candidate’s time, enhancing their overall impression of LEAP as a modern and considerate employer.
Fostering Structural Fairness: Anonymized Candidates for Diversity and Inclusion
One of the Workable features Susanne Poole highlights with particular enthusiasm for its strategic value is candidate anonymization. Within LEAP, an organization that actively embraces diversity as a genuine competitive advantage, the ability to remove identifying information from candidate profiles before they reach hiring managers transcends mere compliance; it represents a deliberate strategic choice. Unconscious bias is an inherent human tendency; hiring managers, despite their best intentions, can unconsciously gravitate towards candidates who share similar backgrounds or characteristics. Anonymization effectively disrupts this pattern, ensuring that the initial evaluation by a decision-maker is based solely on a candidate’s qualifications, skills, and potential contributions, rather than their perceived identity.
"It takes out that unconscious bias thing that we all have, much as we don’t want to have it. Our diversity is definitely our superpower. By anonymizing candidates, you’re just finding the people that have what you need. It is so smart and it was so easy to set up," Poole articulated, underscoring the feature’s role in promoting equitable hiring practices. This systematic approach to mitigating bias is increasingly recognized as a cornerstone of modern talent acquisition, ensuring that meritocracy prevails and that a wider, more diverse talent pool is genuinely considered, ultimately enriching the organization with varied perspectives and experiences.
Eight Years of Innovation: A Partnership for the Future
Beyond the individual features and immediate benefits, what Susanne Poole values most about the Workable partnership is the platform’s continuous evolution. The Workable she adopted in 2018 and the iteration she utilizes today are, in her words, "meaningfully different, in all the right ways." This ongoing innovation is not a luxury but a fundamental requirement for a technology company like LEAP. In a rapidly changing digital landscape, a static hiring platform would quickly become obsolete, hindering rather than helping growth.
"The innovation that has come out of Workable, I can’t keep up with it. The Workable we had in 2018 is completely different to the Workable we have now, and that is how it should be," Poole remarked, acknowledging Workable’s commitment to staying ahead of industry trends and user needs. For LEAP, choosing a hiring platform that consistently innovates ensures that their talent acquisition strategy remains cutting-edge, adaptable, and capable of meeting future challenges. After an eight-year journey, the partnership between LEAP Legal Software and Workable stands as a testament to the power of well-chosen technology in driving organizational success and strategic talent growth.
Broader Impact and Implications for Modern HR
LEAP Legal Software’s success story with Workable offers compelling insights into the broader implications for modern human resources and talent acquisition. The data points – average time to hire of 4 weeks, time to fill of 6 weeks, and the elimination of external recruiter spend for operational and support roles – are indicative of a highly optimized and cost-effective recruitment engine. These metrics are particularly impressive within a global context, where LEAP manages hiring across six countries and supports 900 employees from a single platform. The ability to maintain consistent, predictable hiring cycles across such a diverse operational footprint is a significant competitive advantage.
This case study highlights several key trends in the HR technology landscape:
- The Rise of Strategic HR: By automating administrative tasks, Workable has enabled LEAP’s HR team to shift from transactional activities to more strategic initiatives, such as cultivating an exceptional referral program and focusing on candidate quality.
- Employer Branding through Candidate Experience: The emphasis on automated, professional communication and self-scheduling underscores the growing importance of the candidate experience in shaping employer brand perception and attracting top talent.
- Technology as an Enabler for D&I: Features like candidate anonymization demonstrate how HR technology can be a powerful tool in fostering diversity and inclusion, moving beyond aspirational goals to implement structural fairness in hiring processes.
- Value of Long-Term Vendor Partnerships: The eight-year relationship between LEAP and Workable illustrates the benefits of partnering with vendors who continuously evolve their platforms to meet changing client needs and market demands, ensuring sustained relevance and value.
In an increasingly competitive global talent market, LEAP Legal Software’s journey with Workable serves as a powerful example of how strategic investment in innovative HR technology can drive efficiency, enhance talent quality, and fundamentally transform a company’s ability to scale and thrive.
