Nelson Education's Recruiting Transformation: From Agency Dependency to a 29-Day In-House Hiring Machine
For over a century, Nelson Education has been a fixture in Canadian classrooms. But the company isn't standing still. In the middle of a significant transformation from traditional textbook publisher to education technology company, Nelson recognized that its talent acquisition strategy needed to evolve just as dramatically as its business model. The result? A fully in-house recruiting function that now closes hires in an average of just 29 days — powered entirely by Workable.
This case study explores how Nelson Education made that shift, what drove the decision to bring recruiting in-house, and how Workable's automation and workflow tools made a lean HR team capable of handling 135 hires per year across marketing, sales, technology, and customer-facing roles.
The Problem with Outsourced Recruiting
Nelson Education's previous approach to talent acquisition relied heavily on external recruiting agencies. On the surface, this is a common arrangement — agencies handle sourcing and screening, freeing internal HR teams from administrative burden. But outsourcing recruiting comes with a significant hidden cost that goes beyond agency fees: a fundamental disconnect between the people doing the hiring and the organization they're hiring for.
When a third-party agency recruits on your behalf, they are working from a job description and a brief. They don't sit in your leadership meetings. They don't understand the cultural nuances that separate a good hire from a great one. They can't speak authentically to a candidate about where the company is headed or why this specific role matters to the broader mission.
For a company undergoing a strategic pivot as significant as Nelson Education's — shifting its entire product and service model toward edtech — this misalignment wasn't just inconvenient. It was a potential risk to the quality and speed of hiring at a time when getting the right people in the right roles was critical to the company's future.
Building an Internal Talent Acquisition Function from Scratch
The decision to move recruiting in-house was strategic. Nelson needed a talent acquisition function led by someone deeply embedded in the company's culture, structure, and long-term direction. That person would be capable of representing the brand authentically to candidates, aligning hiring priorities with business needs in real time, and making faster, better-informed decisions throughout the recruitment process.
But building an internal TA function isn't simply a matter of hiring a recruiter and pointing them at open roles. It requires infrastructure — a technology platform that can manage job postings, candidate pipelines, interview scheduling, communication workflows, and reporting. Without the right tools, even the most talented internal recruiter will be buried in administrative tasks that slow everything down and introduce errors.
That's where Workable came in.
How Workable Became the Engine Behind Nelson's Hiring
Workable is an applicant tracking system designed to simplify and accelerate the full recruiting lifecycle. For Nelson Education, it became the operational backbone of their new internal TA function. The platform's automation capabilities were central to achieving — and sustaining — a 29-day average time to hire, which aligns directly with Nelson's internal 30-day target.
Several features of Workable were particularly impactful for Nelson's team:
- Custom Hiring Workflows: Workable allowed Nelson to build tailored pipelines for different role types across departments. Whether hiring a software engineer for the edtech product team or a customer success manager for the education services side of the business, the team could create structured, repeatable processes that reduced guesswork and kept candidates moving efficiently through each stage.
- Automation Tools: Manual tasks that once consumed hours — sending acknowledgment emails, scheduling interviews, moving candidates between pipeline stages — were automated through Workable. This freed the internal TA team to focus on the higher-value, human elements of recruiting: building relationships with candidates, consulting with hiring managers, and making nuanced assessments.
- Centralized Collaboration: With 135 hires per year spread across multiple departments, Nelson's small HR team needed a single source of truth. Workable provided a centralized platform where hiring managers could review candidates, leave structured feedback, and track the status of every open role without flooding inboxes with email chains or losing information in spreadsheets.
- Reporting and Accountability: Workable's analytics capabilities gave Nelson's team visibility into time-to-hire metrics, pipeline conversion rates, and sourcing performance. This data made it possible to identify bottlenecks, measure progress against targets, and continuously optimize the hiring process over time.
The Results: 135 Hires a Year, 29 Days at a Time
The numbers tell a clear story. Nelson Education now completes approximately 135 hires per year through a small internal HR team. The average time to hire across all those roles sits at 29 days — just inside the 30-day internal benchmark the company set as a standard for operational efficiency. That isn't an accident. It is a direct result of the automation, structure, and visibility that Workable provides.
Beyond the metrics, the qualitative impact is equally significant. Hiring is now led by people who understand Nelson from the inside out. Candidates get a more authentic, informed experience during the interview process. Hiring managers have a collaborative partner who knows the business and can prioritize accordingly. And the organization as a whole has more control, more visibility, and more agility in how it builds its workforce.
Key Lessons for Companies Considering Insourced Recruiting
Nelson Education's journey offers valuable lessons for any organization weighing the move from agency-led recruiting to an internal talent acquisition model. First, the decision to insource should be tied to a clear strategic rationale — in Nelson's case, the company's transformation demanded people who could hire with deep institutional knowledge. Second, technology is not optional. An internal TA function without a robust ATS like Workable will quickly become overwhelmed. The right platform doesn't just organize the process; it actively accelerates it. Third, clear internal targets — like Nelson's 30-day benchmark — create accountability and give teams a concrete goal to optimize toward.
Conclusion: Recruiting as a Strategic Advantage
Nelson Education's story is ultimately about recognizing that how you hire is inseparable from who you become as a company. By bringing recruiting in-house and partnering with Workable to build a fast, structured, and data-driven hiring process, Nelson has positioned itself to attract and secure the talent it needs to complete its transformation from legacy publisher to modern edtech leader. In a competitive talent market, a 29-day time-to-hire isn't just an operational metric — it's a competitive advantage.