How New Oakland Family Centers built a standardized recruiting operation across 16 offices with Workable
Quick Results
Category |
Metric / Outcome |
Business Impact |
|---|---|---|
|
Hiring reach |
Multi-board job distribution across 16 Michigan locations |
Expanded candidate visibility in a mental health field with a limited clinical talent pool |
|
Pipeline standardization |
Customizable workflows per role type and department |
Therapists, nurses, and nonclinical staff each move through tailored interview stages |
|
Document management |
Offer letters and contractual agreements for both employees and contractors managed in Workable |
Full-time and contract staff processed through a single platform |
|
Time to hire |
Improved through templated documents and structured HR deadlines |
Recruiting, onboarding, and credentialing segmented into distinct stages that each move candidates forward faster |
|
Candidate communication |
Every applicant acknowledged; every disqualification triggers a notification |
Closed a communication loop that had gone unaddressed through two previous systems |
|
Retention |
Turnover trending downward in first full year after implementation |
Referrals portal actively engaging existing staff in the hiring process |
Who Is New Oakland Family Centers
New Oakland Family Centers is a nonprofit mental health organization that has served communities across Michigan since 1991. With 16 offices and 319 employees, the organization provides multiple levels of care ranging from outpatient therapy to crisis intervention programs for highly acute clients. The workforce spans clinical and nonclinical functions: therapists, nurses, nurse practitioners, psychiatrists, behavioral health technicians, call center staff, and drivers.
Kathleen Kubiak, HR Coordinator, manages all talent acquisition for the organization. Clinical roles are the most difficult to fill. They require a master’s degree and a clinical license, and the candidate pool in mental health is notably thin, particularly in regions of Michigan where staff shortages are most pronounced.
What Hiring Looked Like Before Workable
New Oakland Family Centers went through several platforms before finding one that worked. The earliest approach relied on spreadsheets, individual job postings on Indeed, and cold outreach to candidates. The organization then adopted the ATS add-on offered by its HRIS provider, which was still in early development and presented enough barriers to prompt yet another search. A subsequent platform served the team for roughly a year or two before continued operational issues made clear that something more capable was needed.
What drew them to Workable was a combination of factors: broader candidate reach, scheduling that integrated with their existing calendar system, and the ability to flag candidates for future reconsideration. The platform represented a meaningful upgrade in nearly every dimension that had held them back.
Why Workable
Beyond the feature set, the move to Workable reflected a shift in how the HR team approached hiring infrastructure. Their previous platforms allowed HR to take administrative actions on behalf of hiring managers, which created dependency and limited ownership. Workable’s design encourages managers to engage directly, leaving comments, reviewing candidates, and participating in decisions within the system itself. The change required an adjustment period during onboarding, but the result has been a hiring function that distributes more naturally across the organization.
How Workable Changed Hiring at New Oakland Family Centers
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Reaching More Candidates in a Thin Talent Market
Mental health is not a candidate-rich field. New Oakland Family Centers competes for clinical professionals who hold master’s degrees and clinical licenses, in regions where the available pool can be very small. With Workable’s multi-board distribution, the same posting now reaches candidates across a significantly wider range of platforms simultaneously.
Kubiak describes reach as the broadest positive impact of the platform: “The amount of people who are getting to see our ads has definitely been impactful for us, especially in a field where there are not as many candidates. We want as many people getting eyes on our ads. Even if one job board hasn’t resulted in a mass amount of hires, we’re still getting our name out there.”
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Calendar Integration That Makes On-Site Interviews Work
New Oakland Family Centers does not extend offers without an in-person site visit. The nature of the work, supporting clients in acute mental health situations, requires candidates to see the environment before accepting a role. Workable’s Outlook integration allows the team to schedule these on-site visits directly within the platform, removing the manual coordination that previously existed between the phone screen and the site interview stage.
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Templates That Consolidated the Entire Workflow
Before Workable, sending a background check request meant navigating multiple tools, composing individual emails, and following up when candidates ran into trouble. Offer letters required a separate process. Today, background check templates, full-time offer letters, and a distinct contractual agreement template used for contract staff all live in Workable and go out in a single action. Email templates for every stage of communication are saved and ready to deploy.
“It’s kind of like a one-stop area, which is nice to have it all saved in there,” says Kubiak. “The email templates, having those all saved, it’s definitely helpful to be able to just click and send and not have to spend time drafting an email.”
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Customizable Pipelines for Every Role Type
The way New Oakland Family Centers hires a therapist is not the same as the way it hires a nurse, and neither process resembles hiring for a nonclinical operational role. Workable’s customizable pipeline structure allows each department and role type to have its own interview stages and workflows. When a new office opens, the process is already defined and applies immediately. Relevant leaders can be added directly to a posting to review candidates and participate in decisions without HR acting as an intermediary at every step.
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AI Scoring and Auto-Disqualification That Speed Initial Review
For hiring managers reviewing candidates at volume, the AI candidate match score provides an immediate orientation to fit before the full resume is read. Kubiak notes this is often the first thing hiring managers look at when opening a profile. Auto-disqualification questions filter out candidates who do not meet basic licensing or qualification requirements before any manual review is required.
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Closing the Loop for Every Applicant
One of the most meaningful changes at New Oakland Family Centers has been what happens to candidates who do not advance. Previously, communication fell through the cracks. Now, every applicant receives an automated acknowledgment when they apply, routed through an assistant’s no-reply email address to avoid inbox clutter on the HR side. Disqualified candidates receive a notification when they are moved out of the pipeline. No one is left wondering what happened to their application.
“Closing that loop is something we haven’t been able to do before, which has been really great,” says Kubiak.
Business Impact
New Oakland Family Centers grew from a spreadsheet-based operation to one running 16 offices with a defined multi-stage hiring workflow and a process that is consistent across roles and locations. Workable has been the platform through which that growth was managed.
Application volume is notably higher for postings in the Metro Detroit area, where the multi-board distribution has its most direct effect. Time to hire has improved as the HR team structured its function into distinct segments, each with clear deadlines and templated documents that move candidates forward without delay. Turnover is trending downward in 2025, the first full year of operation after implementing Workable in mid-2024. The referrals portal has opened an additional channel for engaging existing staff in the hiring process.
Hiring managers who once had limited involvement in recruiting are now leaving comments, disqualifying candidates, and communicating directly with applicants within the platform. The team that once relied on cold calls and manually composed emails now runs a coordinated, multi-location hiring operation with the same headcount it has always had.
