How AQUALEX consolidated job ad management and took back control of candidate quality

AQUALEX specialises in manufacturing and distributing drinking-water systems and taps. When the Belgian company expanded into Germany, it needed a recruitment setup that could meet the market’s language and organisational requirements. Managing job promotions across separate platforms was creating unnecessary admin and duplicate work. After switching to Join, AQUALEX consolidated its job ad management in one platform, generated more than 1,700 applications in total, and introduced qualification screening that meaningfully improved who came through the pipeline.

The Challenge: Too many platforms, not enough control

When AQUALEX launched in Germany, the team faced a familiar problem with an unfamiliar urgency. The company’s existing recruitment setup was built for the Belgian market. It was rigid, difficult to customise for a new country’s language and workflows, and had limited support when things went wrong. Setting up job postings for Germany meant working around a tool that was never designed for it.

But the bigger operational problem emerged once they started hiring in earnest. Running job promotions meant logging into each platform separately, managing individual accounts, reconciling separate invoices, and juggling different billing cycles. AQUALEX’s Marketeer, who was also responsible for managing all job ad activity, was effectively running parallel campaigns across disconnected systems.

“If we hadn’t switched, I’d be managing the job content setup on the website, setting it up again on every individual job board, managing all those accounts separately, and handling billing with all of them. The communication overhead alone would have been significant,” she explains.

Three challenges sat at the centre of the problem.

Previous tooling wasn’t built for multi-market customisation. When AQUALEX launched in Germany, the existing recruitment setup wasn’t built to support a new market. Application workflows and candidate-facing communications were difficult to adapt for a German-speaking audience, and attempts to find a workaround hadn’t led anywhere.

Managing promotions across separate job boards meant double the work. Every job board operated independently: its own login, its own invoicing, its own admin. When AQUALEX ran simultaneous promotions on Indeed, LinkedIn, and other channels, there was no central view of what was active, what was spending, and what was performing. “Separate platforms mean separate admin. You end up with billing spread across accounts, no single view of what’s running, and a lot of time spent just keeping things organised,” she says.

High application volume was masking a candidate quality problem. Once hiring picked up momentum, applications started coming in at volume. The team was using Indeed’s Easy Apply function, which meant candidates could apply with a single tap using a pre-filled profile, without reading the full job description or confirming basic requirements. The volume was there. The quality wasn’t.

The Solution: One platform, every promotion, proper filtering

AQUALEX’s Marketeer already knew Join from previous roles and had recommended it to other employers before. When Germany needed a recruitment setup, Join was the natural starting point. The low barrier to entry mattered: the team could test the platform with organic job postings before committing to paid promotions or an annual plan. The results from even the initial free postings were clear enough to make the case internally.

“It wasn’t a difficult internal sell once we could show it working. The entry barrier is genuinely low, and the early results spoke for themselves,” she says.

All job ad management in one place

The most immediate operational win was consolidating everything into a single workflow. With multiposting, AQUALEX publishes a job once and it distributes across 15+ organic job boards automatically, with paid promotions, including LinkedIn and Indeed, bookable from the same interface. There’s one invoice. One platform to log into. One place to track what’s live and what’s performing.

For a lean team managing job ads alongside other marketing responsibilities, this matters. What previously required maintaining relationships with individual job boards, managing separate accounts, and reconciling multiple invoices now happens from a single dashboard. The team has run 80 promotions through Join since getting started, all managed centrally.

Screening questions replaced Easy Apply for better-fit candidates

The volume problem had a specific cause: Easy Apply on Indeed was allowing candidates to send applications in seconds without engaging with the role at all. The team worked with their account manager to disable Easy Apply and redirect candidates directly into Join’s application flow instead. The change meant candidates had to complete a proper application, including a set of screening questions tailored to each role.

AQUALEX now runs up to six custom qualification questions per role, covering experience, location, and role-specific requirements. The questions serve two purposes: they filter out candidates who aren’t a fit before they enter the pipeline, and they give genuine candidates more context about what the job involves. Application volume adjusted, and so did relevance.

“The goal isn’t the highest number of applications. It’s the right people getting far enough through to have a real conversation,” explains Sophie Van Slambrouck, International Recruitment Manager at AQUALEX.

Structured collaboration across a distributed hiring team

With hiring happening across Germany, France, and Belgium, and with different people involved depending on the role, the team needed a way to keep everyone oriented without constant hand-holding. Join’s role-based permissions gave AQUALEX a clean structure: system admins handle setup, billing, and promotion management; HR leads conduct initial screening; and hiring managers get access only to the jobs relevant to them.

The candidate pipeline and notes mean the team doesn’t need to exchange CVs by email or chase updates through separate messages. Context travels with the candidate. Hiring managers can leave observations; HR can respond. “Sending CVs around by email, keeping your own records, hoping nothing gets lost — that creates a much bigger compliance and data risk than people realise. Having everything centralised matters,” she notes.

Automated confirmation emails go out to every candidate as soon as they apply, configured per role type, so the candidate experience stays consistent without requiring manual follow-up from the team.

The Results: More applications, better candidates, less fragmentation

Six months into its annual plan with Join, AQUALEX has a recruitment setup that genuinely scales with how the business operates. The team manages everything, from promotions to pipeline management to billing, from one platform.

Around 800 applications in a year from a single recruitment setup. Across roles ranging from call centre agents and inside sales to senior business development managers, AQUALEX received more than 800 applications through Join in a year. That’s a significant candidate pool for a small team managing ad setup and budget allocation alongside other marketing responsibilities.

80 promotions managed without opening a single external platform account. Every paid promotion, whether an Indeed listing, a LinkedIn campaign, or a multi-board bundle, has been handled within Join. No separate logins. No reconciling billing across accounts. No chasing invoices from different suppliers.

Candidate quality improved after introducing role-specific screening. Since disabling Easy Apply and introducing qualification questions, the applications reaching the HR team are more relevant to the actual roles. The change reduced the volume of clearly unsuitable applications that were adding to the screening workload without contributing to hires.

“What used to involve managing multiple platforms, multiple accounts, and multiple invoices now just happens in one place. That’s genuinely meaningful when you’re running a lean operation.” — Sophie Van Slambrouck, International Recruitment Manager at AQUALEX

The team has also built a structure that flexes by role type. Higher-volume positions like customer-facing sales roles get promotions on different channels than senior external-facing roles, with budget allocated accordingly. Having a single platform with flexible booking options makes that kind of nuanced allocation possible without significant overhead.

Looking ahead, AQUALEX is continuing to expand its presence in Germany and France, with new regions and roles coming online regularly. As headcount requirements grow, the plan is to keep Join as the central system for all recruitment activity in the German market, with the team building on the promotion and pipeline workflows already in place.

“It’s all in one place, everyone can work in it, and we can see what’s running. That’s what we needed.” — Sophie Van Slambrouck, International Recruitment Manager at AQUALEX