How Nelson Education brought recruiting in-house and built a 29-day hiring process with Workable

After more than a century in Canadian classrooms, Nelson Education is in the middle of a transformation from textbook publisher to education technology company. The hiring strategy powering that shift now runs entirely in house, at 29 days average time to hire, on Workable.

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Who Is Nelson Education

Nelson Education is one of Canada’s most recognized names in learning. A textbook publishing company founded nearly 115 years ago, Nelson has been a fixture in Canadian K-12 classrooms for generations, deeply ingrained in the country’s educational landscape. Over the past decade, the company has been making a deliberate shift into education technology. Its flagship digital product, Edwin, functions as a digital backpack for teachers and students, offering curriculum-aligned resources organized by grade, province, and subject. Students access it as a learning tool; educators integrate it directly into instruction.

Nelson still sells textbooks, but its workforce planning and recruiting strategy now reflect a company becoming a full service education technology organization. Samara York Cazes, Senior Manager of People and Engagement, leads that recruiting effort as part of a small but capable HR team, overseeing talent acquisition, performance management, learning and development, and HR operations across the entire organization.

What Hiring Looked Like Before Workable

Before Workable, Nelson’s recruiting function did not exist internally. Hiring was outsourced entirely to external agencies. There was no ATS, no structured pipeline, and no consistent way to evaluate or advance candidates. The agencies sometimes produced results, but the arrangement was expensive, removed control from the company, and kept hiring decisions at arm’s length from the people who best understood Nelson’s direction and culture.

“Having a person who is in house, who really knows the culture of the company, who really understands the dynamics and structure in depth, is very valuable.”

The decision to bring recruiting internal coincided with Nelson’s VP implementing Workable, drawing on direct experience with the platform from a previous role. When York Cazes joined the team and took ownership of the TA portfolio, Workable was ready to be built out at full capacity.

Why Workable

York Cazes came to Workable having previously used BambooHR as an all-in-one HR and ATS system. It did the job, but it was not a dedicated ATS. Workable was a different experience entirely.

“My world was expanded when I realized the setup of the pipeline and how you could set up different pipelines for different roles, all the automations. I found all of that to be really easy to use and to figure out and learn.”

She was operating the platform at a professional level within a week or two.

For a small HR team managing hiring across an entire organization undergoing a business transformation, the combination of deep customization and genuine ease of use made Workable the right fit.

“It’s so customizable and user friendly. I would recommend it to anyone in a small to mid-size organization.”

How Workable Changed Hiring at Nelson Education

1. Pipeline Visibility That Keeps Every Candidate Accounted For

One of the most immediate changes York Cazes noticed was the ability to see exactly where every candidate stood at any moment across every active role. The jobs view shows each search, its pipeline stages, and the number of candidates at each step. Nothing disappears.

“The quick overview of where candidates are all the time is incredibly helpful. It kind of sounds obvious because it’s so straightforward, but just having that view makes sure that no candidate gets forgotten about or left behind.”

2. Automation Built Around the Candidate Experience

York Cazes describes herself as a technology enthusiast, and she has built an automation architecture in Workable that reflects it. When an application comes in, an automated action fires. As candidates progress through stages, personalized emails go out. After a first round interview, candidates receive a thank-you with next steps. After a second round, the same, with additional context. Rejection notifications are templated in three versions based on how far a candidate advanced, so the message always reflects the investment the candidate made.

Her philosophy is deliberate:

“If we assume they will thank us, we make sure to thank them.”

Candidates notice. York Cazes regularly hears that applicants appreciate how easy it is to apply and how consistently they are communicated with throughout the process. The careers site contributes to this as well. Workable’s customizable careers page lets her control exactly what appears in an application. She removed the cover letter requirement entirely, a decision she sees as an immediate signal to candidates about the kind of experience they are walking into.

3. Offer Letters That Make the Final Step Seamless

Managing offer letters entirely within Workable has removed the friction that once characterized the end of the hiring process.

“Having that entire functionality in Workable has made it way more organized and less scattered and just more seamless for us and for the candidate receiving the offer.”

The final step now feels like a natural continuation of the process rather than a jarring handoff to a different system.

4. Structured Evaluation Across Every Role Type

Hiring at Nelson spans a wide range of functions, from software engineers and QA analysts to marketing, finance, and customer support, each requiring a different evaluation lens. York Cazes builds thorough application questions and scorecards tailored to each role. Hiring managers are tagged into candidate profiles to leave comments and complete evaluations. Most engage reliably; some use the platform to schedule their own interviews as well. She says of adoption:

“The fact that they’ve never complained about it is probably the leading indicator.”

5. Inclusive Job Distribution

As a company whose mission is rooted in education and access, Nelson posts to Indigenous job boards and platforms focused on candidates with disabilities through Workable’s distribution network. Reaching underrepresented candidate pools is a core part of how York Cazes approaches each search, not an afterthought.

6. Reporting That Anchors the TA Function in Data

York Cazes tracks time to hire, time to fill, and candidate source data through Workable’s reporting tools. The reports are accessible, useful, and genuinely easy to interpret. Staying at or under a 29-day average time to hire is a concrete internal goal, and Workable’s reporting is how she confirms whether the function is meeting it.

Business Impact

Nelson Education now manages 135 hires per year out of a small HR team, with an average time to hire of 29 days, while navigating one of the most consequential business transformations in its history. A company that once outsourced every hire to external agencies now has an internal recruiting function built on a deep understanding of its own culture, operated by someone who describes herself as a resounding fan of the platform she uses to run it.

Automation has recovered hours that previously went toward manual candidate communication. Offer letters no longer create friction at the final stage. Every candidate, whether they receive an offer or not, moves through a process that reflects the same care and communication Nelson applies to its educational products.