A woolly mammoth. A dodo. A software engineer. Sometimes recruitment can feel like an impossible quest for what you can only assume is now an extinct beast.

Whilst this alone may not lead you to outsource your recruitment, having an outsourcer than can help you conquer these conundrums is essential. You can have the fastest, cheapest resourcing processes in the world, but if at the end of all that you’re just putting bums on seats or finding you world leading experts that upset everyone around them, you’re not really solving anything.

Finding you better quality talent, whilst saving you time and money. That’s what Hays Talent Solutions does. Putting the right person, in the right job, at the right time.

Building new talent pools within a shrinking sea of skills

When one of our sourcing partners noted that job boards results were beginning to dwindle and salaries were on the up 10-15% over 18 months, in an area was going to be a continued area of focus for our client, he didn’t just wait for war for talent to come to him, he took matters into his own hands.

Having noted the financial services giant had demonstrable commitment towards progressing internal professionals from one area into this skills shortage waiting to happen, he began to explore how the external market for these people compared to their internal team and if the business would entertain applications from these external candidates into this area too.

The sourcing expert began by mapping the external market, to find out how many of these professionals were present and active across the various recruiting channels, from referrals to social media and other online communities, using as many different relevant job titles as he could.

The result

A list of where the most relevant external talent was, not to mention the identification of 219 candidates in the right area. This new talent pipeline began to deliver for the client straight away, with three hires as a direct result, and the beginnings of a talent pool that the sourcing partner now maintains, keeping our client one step ahead of the competition.

We’ve achieved similar results with talent pools for clients around the world. Our talent pooling efforts for an RPO across 17 countries have seen direct hire fill rates rise from 80% after one year to 93% at the end of the second year, reaching 96% by the third year, whilst others have reached 98% as a result of pipelining, talent pooling and internal mobility support.

An example of the talent pool in action in a specific team was within the Finance division who were looking to engage an experienced intake of fresh talent to support their succession planning by bridging the gap between graduate programme hires and senior management.

Mobilising the internal workforce

Everyone knows the existing workforce and referrals are the most effective source for candidates. However, when you’re a global company with over 50,000 employees split across a multiple product lines and functions just communicating all the different opportunities available is no easy task, let alone asking your workforce if they know anyone suitable.

However, when a multinational corporation came to Hays with just that challenge, help us mobilise our existing workforce and their networks, to reduce the need to source, we set to work. We used the workforce from the start, canvassing their opinion to uncover what they thought would help. We found their employees would actually really the value the opportunity to get a deeper understanding of the different lines of business, and understand more clearly what types of career options exist. However, taking it one step further than this there was desire for a career network that would allow them to make connections with leaders in other areas.

In response Hays worked with the internal HR team to plan and develop a career development day, which included:

• A series of presentations from four business areas, showcasing what they do, the transferable skills and experience they look for, and what a career in their team looks like
• Promotion of open roles, existing career development tools and resources and referral schemes
• Live demonstrations of how to use the tools and resources
• Advice on how to secure a new role internally, from how handle potentially awkward conversations with line managers and approaching other business areas, as well as advice on who to introduce to the business and how
• Dedicated networking opportunities with leaders from across the business
   

The result

99% of the 340 attendees rated the day as valuable and worth the time they invested, with 78% stating they’d do something differently or take action as a result.

Going global for the best talent

Poor quality recruitment and retention of staff quality would be an issue for any business, but when you’re suffering from external brand issues, and striving for large scale change to address this, it becomes an even more complex concern.

This was exactly the situation Hays Talent Solutions was bought in to support when one of our UK public sector clients asked us to design and deliver an innovative recruitment campaign to attract high-caliber social work candidates. We worked closely with both the relevant operational department as well as the HR team to create an engaging package that would attract candidates, but most importantly retain them for the future. Targeted with employing 12 qualified senior social workers from New York to work in the UK the Hays Account Manager became an extension of the council, bringing together the HR department and the hiring team to enable a smooth delivery of the project.

The interview process was critical as it needed to be very thorough to ensure the right calibre of candidate. Therefore, using our UK and US presence combined the dedicated Hays Account Manager carried out a comprehensive process prior to the final interview and written assessment in New York.

From an original response of over 80 candidates, Skype interviews were undertaken and a shortlist of 30 candidates was produced. Hays travelled to New York alongside the Director of Children’s Services, the Head of Safeguarding and the Policy and Performance Manager to ensure the recruiting process went smoothly.

Compliance and safeguarding is a fundamental principle that underpins all recruitment activity at Hays, which was vital in this situation due to the nature of the work the social workers would be dealing with combined with the international complexities at play here.

The result

From face-to-face interviews, 13 offers of employment were made, supporting the council on an exciting journey, shaping and transforming the services they offer to make a visible difference to the community.

Reducing external reliance

As testament to our performance with payrolling and then our success running an MSP, in February 2015 we added an RPO arm to our work with one of Australia's largest financial services brands. This originated from the business realising that the internal recruitment team was struggling to cover all of the roles they were required to deliver and agency spend was very high. With Hays Talent Solutions coming on site, the business was able to utilise its internal team to be more niche in their focus while our team manages all volume recruitment. This involves all administration and secretarial roles as well as a majority of their customer-centric roles, whether this is branch or phone based.

The result

Utilising our centre of excellence model to scale up our RPO recruitment capacity has allowed us to ensure time to hire remains under 25 calendar days - within KPIs from the start of the service, whilst delivering 100% direct sourcing within the RPO model, ensuring cost savings directly to the business.

Contact us to discuss how we could help you access the best talent