Discover how companies like yours have reduced their time to hire

Process audits, workforce planning, attraction source reviews, talent pipelining and educating your hiring managers. A lot of work goes into speeding up your recruitment.

Here’s just one example of how we delivered better, faster, more cost efficient access to talent: 

Halving time to hire with Hays Talent Solutions

When a multi-national corporate moved their customer service team from one country to another they needed to hire a wide variety of language skills in a short time period, so they turned to Hays Talent Solutions to develop an optimised candidate attraction strategy and process, who reduced the time to hire by half.

50% reduction in time to hire

Moving resources

Rising attrition is a common problem in customer service. Tight monthly, quarterly and annual targets leave little room for error when it comes to having the required manpower available.

Add language skills to the requirement and you’re got a challenging brief for any talent acquisition team. However, when a large financial services company sought to relocate some of their customer care roles from mainland Europe to the UK they needed to do just that and fast.

With offices already in the UK they turned to their local recruitment team’s tried and tested methods. However, they soon found customer service candidates move quickly. Their resources were already stretched, and with the added difficultly of identifying talent with the right languages in the first place, they were struggling to get the results they needed. 

The team realised the Hays Talent Solutions team they had delivering for other areas of the business might be able to help, and so engaged our support.

Plotting the way forward

Of the language skills required, German represented the largest volume requirement. Our initial research suggested that this would be a challenging target in itself. The native German speaking population in the UK represents a relatively small target audience, which is mainly concentrated in London and the surrounding area. Plus, the strength of the German economy at the time suggested that people would have less need to seek work outside of the country.

Given the size and diversity of our target audience, we recognised our candidate attraction strategy need to be highly targeted, whilst optimising a broad range of channels. In addition, we recognised that word-of-mouth would play an important role in attracting suitably skilled candidates.

Targeted attraction

Our candidate attraction strategy involved a wide range of channels, from the ‘traditional’ to the new – covering print, press, events, online and social – in order to engage a number of discrete target audiences was given a buddy for the life cycle of their training.

We placed postings on a range of interest groups, ‘Germans in the UK’, ‘German speaking jobs’, ‘Working in Britain’, on sites such as LinkedIn and Xing. We posted jobs on dedicated expat portals, justlanded.com, internations.org as well as creating on campus posters at local universities and language schools, where we also attended events.

Targeted pay per click Facebook advertising and activity meant we could attract passive candidates, but be sure to only spend on those with intent to apply.

However, a key element of our campaign was our business-wide promotion in both Germany and the UK. We created a time limited special offer which was promoted onsite in posters, e-mails and desk drops.

The result

When we combined this with a clear approvals hierarchy, working with the hiring managers to ensure timely feedback and that paperwork was available and complete immediately following interviews, we managed to take the average time to hire from 45 days to 22. We also achieved a 93% direct fill rate, which can be a big time saver, cutting out any middle men.

Process automation to beat the skills shortage

Whilst process automation that comes from implementing VMS software is great for reducing time to hire when you first start out in recruitment outsourcing, it's often only the beginning. When one of our clients, a multi-national financial service provider, noticed they were missing out on some of the best talent in a key area because the top candidates were receiving offers from their competitors before they could get them to sign on the line, Hays knew it was more than just the pay and benefits on offer that needed to be addressed.

Faced with severe skills shortages to stop the competition beating this credit card giant to the post Hays implemented a 48 hour SLA to produce and issue contracts to candidates. Despite the company having implemented one of the market's broadest talent management platforms the current workflow wasn't up to the job. Hays developed a process outside of the system, using office and automated macros to build the contract. Meaning all hiring managers had to do was complete the form, and Hays would take care of the rest.

The result

The process was simplified and streamlined, which led to reduced errors and faster time to hire. In fact the process was so successful it was extended to other areas and geographies. Not one to rest on our laurels we're exploring how much more we can automate using the talent management system, but that's a work in progress so we'll have to get back to you on that one.

Process review to deliver competitive advantage

Sometimes a simple workaround isn't enough. Sometimes you need to go completely back to the drawing board.

The ability to respond to a client's demands, at the drop of a hat, is the hallmark of success for any business. When your one of Europe's leading IT infrastructure service providers it's essential. This requires a complex and costly 'bench' of skilled technicians, available on demand, whose every assignment, even if just a few hours long, is tracked with precision. So when they wanted to implement a new finance system Hays worked with them to ensure not only did this improve staffing cost controls, but that job requisition and approvals we're improved too.

We don't just wait for a client to come to us with a need or requirement, we're constantly looking for opportunities to improve the way we deliver the best talent to our clients more efficiently. By providing our clients with real time management information, around service quality, delivery and cost, not to mention taking the opportunity to reconfigure the workflows of job requisition, approval and distribution, we supported our client to improve the technology they use to recruit and manage their talent, and their ability to deliver to their clients too.

The result

Some years on and the relationship has gone from strength to strength, with the company's high volume, niche skill set, requirements meaning constant innovation is required to maintain competitive advantage. Outsourcing has enabled the business to achieve a direct hire fill rate of 98% direct fill rate for contractor placements, and 79% permanent fill rate. Reducing their reliance on agencies, cutting out the middle man and therefore improving their time hire.

To find out more about what an RPO is and how it could support your talent acquisition download our whitepaper.