Interview with First Bank and Trust Lubbuck

By Nathan Shackles

Bill deTournillon is the VP of Marketing and Strategic Planning at FirstBank & Trust Lubbock, who is one of our valued customers.  The following is a transcript of a recent interview we did with Bill regarding their implementation of ApplicantStack for their online employment applications.

Hi Bill. Tell us about First Bank and Trust and your role.

Bill: Here at First Bank & Trust, I’m in charge of customer service, customer convenience, customer satisfaction, and how we present ourselves to customers, which includes anybody who we want to recruit for a job opening.

What role do you have in hiring and recruiting?

Bill: I oversee our HR function. I have an HR director, who’s also in charge of our corporate values.

How do you use ApplicantStack?

Bill: Last year it was in our strategic plan to get to an automated process where potential applicants could access our website and apply directly to us from wherever they were without having to come to a location. We wanted to enable them to do it electronically. So we did a thorough analysis to determine the best software product for doing this and ApplicantStack was the product we chose.

What was your process before ApplicantStack?

Bill: Our process prior to going to the online application and evaluation process was that somebody had to print the application from our website, then either fax it to us or bring it to us.

And what is your process like now?

Bill: By going with ApplicantStack we’ve accomplished the online application process but in addition to that the real benefit that we’ve seen is the ease of tracking applicants and communication with those applicants. We can now generate an electronic response to them and keep track of communication, and narrow it down from the process of bulk applications down to qualified candidates and then proceed from there. And we do all this in a very efficient manner that keeps the applicants informed and gives us a clear record of how all that transpired.

What kind of people do you hire?

Bill: We hire the full gamut, entry level all the way up to management level positions, through this process. One of the advantages that we found was that the complete anonymity and confidentiality of people who want to apply through this process prevents them from having to physically make an appearance at the location, which does at times compromise their confidentiality.

Where do you post your jobs?

Bill: We post to external job boards and link them back to our ApplicantStack job board on our website to apply. We post to Lubbockonline, KCBD, and Monster. We also post to specialized sites when we’re looking for certain criteria. For example a mortgage underwriter will go to a mortgage underwriting site, or if we’re looking for a lender we’ll go to a bank lending recruitment site.

Would you recommend ApplicantStack to others?

Bill: After having evaluated all the different options that we had for going with an electronic online application process and analysis, we felt like ApplicantStack met all of our expectations and now is exceeding those.

OK, last question (and it’s important). If you could have any job in the world, besides of course your current one, what would you want to do?

Bill: I’d be the ranch manager for my ranch.