Industry: Telecoms & Utilities

Talent Consulting and Strategic Sourcing Support for Business Critical Roles

Posted on by edyson
Talent Consulting and Strategic Sourcing Support for Business Critical Roles

Talent Consulting and Strategic Sourcing Support for Business Critical Roles

PeopleScout helped this waste disposal company source, attract and hire drivers, administrative roles and technicians with RPO, recruitment marketing campaigns and compliance support.

16,000 annual hires targeted
957 offers made over two career day events
38 % improvement in key SLAs in just 30 days

A leading waste disposal and environmental services company faced significant challenges sourcing, attracting and hiring talent for vital full-time frontline roles including CDL drivers, technicians and administrative roles.

Scope and Scale

As a result of continuing skills shortages in high-demand roles, the client found it increasingly difficult to source talent with the required skills, credentials and experience to fill business-critical roles. The client required a full-cycle RPO solution to support its internal team in making 16,000 annual hires across North America. What’s more, the client sought a consultative partnership with ongoing strategic guidance and best practice implementation across the client’s talent sourcing program.

Situation

PeopleScout has partnered with the client for nearly 14 years supporting full-cycle, end-to-end roles and recently, the client required additional support for partial-cycle hiring. PeopleScout deployed a flexible RPO solution to source and deliver a continuous slate of qualified candidates into the client’s talent pipeline. PeopleScout also provides the client with recruitment marketing support, detailed talent market insights and expertise on program compliance.

Solution

  • PeopleScout’s team executes talent sourcing strategies, provides guidance on how to tap into talent channels and helps the client develop grassroots recruitment marketing campaigns to reach the right candidates.
  • PeopleScout developed a custom SLA dashboard and performance reporting via Affinix Analytics which highlights roles that aren’t getting as much traction and optimizes channel usage and ad spend accordingly.
  • With the additional scope, PeopleScout ramped up its team of 47 to 284, with specialized global support spanning India, Poland, UK and the U.S.
  • PeopleScout Talent Advisory team conducted a two-phased research project, including an exhaustive candidate persona framework based on interviews with the client’s current employees, for insight into their talent audience to develop highly targeted creative and messaging.
  • PeopleScout created a new employer branding and recruitment marketing strategy, and dedicated marketing experts from PeopleScout manage all the client’s social media accounts.

Results

  • PeopleScout’s team finds qualified candidates in niche skill sets despite challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting talent shortages.
  • PeopleScout’s full-cycle RPO solution targets an average of 16,000 annual hires for extremely difficult skill sets, improving business outcomes across the enterprise.
  • Implemented new channels including Indeed, Appcast, geofencing, social media and more which allow the team to instantly post jobs to multiple job boards at one time.
  • After just 30 days of launching the SLA dashboard, the client saw a 38% improvement in SLAs including the interview-to-offer ratio, candidate outreach timeframe and offer extension timeline.
  • PeopleScout helped with the planning and execution of two career day events with over 1,900 attendees and 957 offers made, resulting in two of the best career day events the client has ever had.

AT A GLANCE

  • COMPANY: Waste disposal and environmental services company
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Talent Advisory, Affinix
  • ANNUAL HIRES: 16,000
  • ABOUT THE CLIENT: As a leading waste disposal company in North America, this organization has over 45,000 employees supporting over 20 million residences and businesses with their waste and recycling needs.
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Labor Market Trends Impacting Customer Service Hiring 

Posted on by akessler

In today’s tumultuous labor market, where some industries are slowing down, customer service hiring is still challenging across financial services, utilities, hospitality and retail. Organizations in these sectors often find themselves competing on customer experience, which is being impacted by the lack of staff.  

A consumer survey from PwC shows that the four most important factors for an exceptional customer experience are speed, convenience, knowledgeable help and friendly service. The key to excelling in these factors is happy, engaged employees. Organizations with highly engaged workforces are 21% more productive, outperform competitors by 147% and have customer loyalty rates 233% higher than companies without engaged employees. 

How can companies achieve this kind of success when they are struggling to fill their customer-facing vacancies? Talent acquisition leaders are getting creative to recruit and retain customer service and call center talent. Here are three trends in how companies are adjusting their approach to hiring and engaging a customer-focused workforce.  

Trend 1: Hiring for Potential 

As customer expectations have changed, so have the skills needed for top customer service talent. We recently conducted a poll in which talent leaders indicated that soft skills related to emotional intelligence are highly sought after. 

The most desired skills for customer service recruiting are communication, empathy and relationship building.

We’ve worked with several of our clients to implement a culture-centric approach for attracting talent. Instead of assessing candidates based on previous work experience, we advise evaluating based on whether they possess the right skills, values and behaviors to be successful in the role. We’re reimagining interviews and assessments to be more focused on soft skills and purpose as we help talent leaders and hiring managers embrace candidates coming from outside of their industry.  

Trend 2: Expanding Talent Pools  

With job openings outnumbering job seekers, organizations across sectors find themselves getting creative as they try to expand their talent pool. For some, this means looking into new talent audiences, like underrepresented group or military veterans, and putting programs in place such as apprenticeships to future-proof their talent pipeline.  

For many companies, the growth of remote work means that they’re looking outside of their physical call center locations to candidates across the country and even expanding to new countries. This requires an adjustment to your talent acquisition strategy to ensure your employer brand and recruitment processes are ready to handle dispersed talent.  

Trend 3: Adapting to Remote Work 

Remote work is impacting more than just where talent comes from, it also affects how organizations onboard and engage their staff. As some countries are experiencing a cost-of-living crisis, customer service representatives are fielding queries from vulnerable customers which can be especially draining. Talent leaders are getting creative in how they connect with staff to ensure a sense of belonging and wellness—regardless of where the employee is working.  

Some contact centers have even adjusted their operational structure to work in “pods” which ensures agents—both in the office and remote—get the support they need to solve customer queries efficiently. Before, managers and team leads could walk around the call center floor and see when agents looked stressed. Remote working has made it harder to monitor employee wellbeing. Customer-focused leaders are investing in employee wellbeing, from training managers to catch the signs of burnout to offering wellbeing support programs.  

These are just a few of the labor market trends that are impacting how companies hire and engage talent. Clearly, organizations are finding creative and bold ways to invest in their employees to maintain a resilient and customer-focused workforce.  

9 STRATEGIES FOR SOLVING HIGH-VOLUME HIRING CHALLENGES

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Strategies for Overcoming High-Volume Hiring Challenges

Posted on by akessler

Competition for talent is steep, with high demand from contact centers, hospitality, retail, security, travel, logistics, healthcare and even government entities. In fact, 65% of companies have high-volume recruitment needs. Organizations across sectors are struggling to stand out in today’s competitive talent landscape, but for those talent leaders trying to meet their high-volume recruitment goals it feels like an impossible mission with soaring attrition rates, labor shortages and record job vacancies.

In this article, we’ll explore some of the top challenges you’re probably experiencing with high-volume recruitment and offer some ideas to address them.

What is High-Volume Recruitment?

High-volume recruitment involves sourcing, screening, interviewing and hiring large numbers of applicants for similar openings or job types. It requires a tricky balance of keeping substantial quantities of job applicants moving through the recruitment process at speed. Plus, throughout the year it requires talent acquisition teams to scale up quickly to meet seasonal demand, like for holiday shopping periods or during peak travel times.

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9 Strategies for Solving High-Volume Hiring Challenges

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The High-Volume Hiring Landscape

COVID-19 was a mixed bag for high-volume recruitment. Retail and logistics workers were less severely impacted by furloughs and layoffs due to the “front line” status of grocery stores and the growth in online shopping. However, other industries, including the travel and hospitality sectors, were hit hard as lockdown came into force. 

The following trends are shaping the high-volume recruitment landscape:

  • Increased Competition:
    Job openings have grown by a third since 2019, yet job seekers per opening have fallen by half. Plus, hourly employees who were let go during the pandemic may feel resentful of their former employers and may have moved on to other roles in other sectors.
  • Recruiters are Rare:
    As of April 2021, recruiter job postings on LinkedIn surpassed pre-pandemic levels. There’s a record number of roles to be filled and not enough recruiters to tackle the work, creating a series of knock-on effects for organizations.
  • Attrition is Skyrocketing:
    A massive 41% of the global workforce is considering quitting their jobs and only 20% report feeling engaged at work. In a recent survey, 55% of hiring managers cited retention and turnover as the number-one issue impacting their ability to hire—and their company’s ability to thrive.
  • Candidate Expectations Have Changed:
    Modern candidates have modern expectations which are more aligned with today’s consumer experience. They want digital-first experiences—on their mobile phone—and fast responses. In fact, they expect acknowledgement of their application immediately upon submission, first contact from a recruiter within 24 hours and regular updates on the hiring process in a timely manner.

High-Volume Recruitment Challenges and Solutions

In this challenging landscape, how can employers stand out from the competition and attract a large number of candidates quickly without sacrificing quality?

We’ll tackle three of the top challenges below and offer strategies you can use to get ahead.

Challenge: Ghosting and Candidate Drop Off are Rampant

“Ghosting”—not showing up with no reason given and often no communication from the candidate—is on the rise at the interview, assessment and even onboarding stages. According to an Indeed survey on ghosting in the workplace, 22% of candidates say they have accepted a job offer but didn’t show up for the first day of work.

Many organizations are not prepared to support the current pace of hiring. Candidates are much less tolerant of long recruitment processes and pauses in communication from employers, so organizations who can move the fastest are more likely to have their offers accepted. Plus, those doing high-volume recruitment are seeing an increase in candidates dropping out of the funnel even in the application phase. If applying for a position is too complicated or too long, candidates won’t complete it. Online applications with 45 or more questions have an abandonment rate of nearly 90%.

Solution:

An RPO partner can help you evaluate your recruitment processes and identify opportunities for efficiency. They may suggest steps you could eliminate or combine and introduce tactics to help reduce the time between steps to help you keep pace with candidate expectations and reduce ghosting. They can also take over time-consuming steps like reference verification and background checks, leaving your team to focus on moving candidates through he funnel faster.

RPO providers also have access to the latest talent acquisition technology which can automate parts of your process. Leveraging CRM technology enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI), your RPO partner can nurture candidates through automated recruitment emails and even SMS messages. Texting is also a great way to screen candidates and automate interview scheduling, eliminating manual steps and accelerating your hiring timeline. By automating some of your candidate communications, you keep candidate engaged and reduce funnel drop off without increasing the workload for your recruiters and hiring managers.

Challenge: Desperation to Fill Vacancies Results in Reduced Quality-of-Hire

Increased attrition from the Great Resignation is leading to productivity loss. Many businesses have been forced to close stores due to lack of staff or because they don’t have enough staff to assist customers in a timely manner—in-store, in-branch or in the call center. The customer experience suffers which results in decreased sales and revenue loss, leading to some talent acquisition teams and hiring managers making bad hires out of desperation to fill vacancies.

With tight competition, time-to-offer has become a competitive differentiator. Often hiring managers may skip some interview or assessments steps in order to speed up their processes and keep talent in the funnel, leading them to compromise on quality-of-hire. Candidate without the right skills can also impact your customer experience.

Solution:

Challenge your assumptions or your hiring managers’ assumptions about the type of skills and background that are really needed for your roles. This will help you understand what experience is necessary for talent to have coming into the role and what can be learned on the job. We did this for one of our high-volume RPO clients that was struggling to hire for customer service roles. By interviewing their most successful customer-facing employees, we helped the brand realise that past customer service experience was not a predictor of future success, but rather employees stressed the amount of problem solving they had to do in their daily tasks. Not only did this expand their pool of talent, but it also helped to increase the quality of their hires and reduce attrition.

To support this, you should also rethink your candidate assessment so that it evaluates not just hard skills, like the ability to use a point-of-sale system, but also soft skills like empathy, attitude and work ethic, which are increasingly important for high-volume hiring. At PeopleScout, we’ve developed our whole person assessment model specifically for high-volume hiring. Through this we’ve helped many organizations create an assessment process that can identify and excite great candidates without extending their recruitment timeline.

Challenge: Leaning on Hiring Managers to Recruit is Leading to Burnout

With recruiters in short supply, hiring managers are picking up the slack in order to fill their vacancies. Unstructured, ineffective hiring processes and weak employer brands are putting the burden of attracting candidates and creating positive candidate experiences squarely on the hiring manager. The pressure only increases as they miss business targets due to lack of staff. In fact, 84% of hiring managers say they have hit or have come close to burnout because of hiring for their organization.

Solution:

A high-volume RPO solution helps augment your resources by acting as an extension of your in-house team. An RPO provider can handle everything at scale from sourcing and pipelining, screening, interviews, assessments, reference checks, offer management and more—whatever you need to free up your in-house recruiters and hiring managers to focus on more high-value tasks. Plus, RPO partners have particular focus on keeping hiring managers informed—whether it be ensuring they’re prepared for interviews or delivering feedback from candidates afterwards.

One of the biggest value-adds that RPO brings is experience with the latest talent technology innovations. An RPO partner can help you assess talent acquisition software to address all aspects of your recruiting process, from sourcing talent to creating a more efficient candidate experience. Your provider can show you how emerging technologies like AI, machine learning and predictive analytics can boost your speed and hire quality. Your hiring managers will love not having to spend so much time on administrative tasks.

Conclusion

The current talent market can’t be conquered with your old talent acquisition strategies. A high-volume RPO solution offers a range of approaches to help organizations attract, process and hire a large number of candidates. Whether you need to revamp your employer brand or to augment your in-house recruitment team, an RPO partner can help crank up your high-volume recruitment program.

9 Strategies for Solving High-Volume Hiring Challenges

Posted on by akessler

9 Strategies for Solving High-Volume Hiring Challenges

Competition for hourly talent is steep, with high demand from call centers, hospitality, retail, security, travel, logistics, healthcare and even government entities. In fact, 65% of companies have high-volume recruitment needs.

Talent acquisition leaders are facing the most tumultuous job market in recent memory with an impossible combination of soaring job openings and a labor shortage.

  • So, how do they compete for hourly talent when the competition is so fierce?
  • And how can they prepare for seasonal peaks?
  • More importantly, how can they increase speed without sacrificing on quality-of-hire?

Download our ebook to learn 9 Strategies for Solving High-Volume Hiring Challenges. It’s a must-read for any talent acquisition team focused on solving critical problems in their high-volume hiring programs.

Vodafone: Overcoming a Powerful Consumer Brand in Graduate Recruitment

Posted on by jpatel
Vodafone: Overcoming a Powerful Consumer Brand in Graduate Recruitment

Vodafone: Overcoming a Powerful Consumer Brand in Graduate Recruitment

To overcome misperceptions about their mission, Vodafone engaged PeopleScout for employer branding and a recruitment marketing campaign to support its early careers recruitment program.

16,000 Applications Received, Beating our Target by 60%
23 % Increase in the Numbers of Female Candidates
27 Places Jumped on the Times Top 100 Rankings

Counterintuitive as it sounds, strong consumer brands can hinder recruitment. Applicants can get an idea of what to expect that doesn’t match the reality of the careers experience being offered. This was the case with Vodafone. For consumers, the organization is a high-profile mobile phone retailer. But, behind that perception sits a multifaceted tech innovator with a mission to make the future world a better place.

In order to achieve this, Vodafone turned to PeopleScout to help it become a youth employer of choice, because changing the future meant gaining the buy-in of those who would be influential within it for years to come.

RESEARCH

As part of our research phase, we took a deep dive into Vodafone’s future jobs strategy. The client wanted to overcome high levels of youth unemployment by providing up to 100,000 young people with a digital workplace experience at Vodafone. Plus, given that one-in-five young people say they feel under-prepared for the digital economy, the business set another ambitious goal to support 10 million young people with access to digital skills, learning and employment opportunities.

So, how could Vodafone attract Millennials, Gen Z and beyond? These generations are big achievers whose ambitions soar higher than working in mobile phone retail. We needed an attraction strategy and recruitment marketing campaign that changed their audience’s perceptions about Vodafone and all the different kinds of careers—and impacts—they could make there.

THE BRIEF

Vodafone asked us to create a campaign that would spark conversations and stand out as part of their instantly recognizable brand. They needed to generate 10,000 applications to fill 150 graduate roles and 100 intern/industrial student placements across the business. Plus, the overarching goal was to change misperceptions of Vodafone, showing it as a major tech company, not a retailer, and build its reputation as a youth employer of choice. Importantly, we were asked to reach a more diverse audience and increase female applications.

AUDIENCE INSIGHTS

Of our target audience, 90.4% regularly used social media. On top of this, 91% of all social media users access channels via mobile. So, we developed a mobile-first, social media friendly campaign. Further research revealed that many students with the right background and personal qualifications were put off from applying due to a lack of confidence. So, we needed a message that was bold, relatable and empowering.

Just as important as the audience insights were the strategic considerations. Candidates are also customers. When buying products, they expect a streamlined, user-friendly, friction-free process, and they had the same expectation when making career decisions. So, we made every touchpoint (especially the application) as slick and easy as possible.

No contemporary attraction approach can be just about advertising. Long-term connections are far more powerful. So, central to our strategy was to set Vodafone up to engage in conversations and initiatives with high-potential university students throughout their full university lifecycle. In short, the strategy was to start on day one, not year three.

THE CORE MESSAGE

Our message, #GenerationPossible, aimed to capture the spirit of change and possibility and draw on the opportunity young people have to make an impact on the world for the better. Our visual approach used photography that reflected our target audience combined with bold headline statements.

Social media and career site content featured current grads and interns sharing their advice for the next generation of Vodafone employees, with a #GenerationPossible video at the heart of this campaign. Our six-month social media strategy for mobile consisted of 104 social posts with 20 mini-videos/GIFs. We posted, tracked and analyzed this content on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Get to Know Us Videos

Our research had identified that our target audience felt like they weren’t good enough or lacked the skills to take on these roles. So, we created a series of videos featuring current Vodafone graduate recruits and interns. Filmed in and around Vodafone’s main campus, these videos gave real-life insights into what they could expect when it came to work, wellbeing, social responsibility, innovation, the assessment center and the interview process.

Campus Events

Away from social media, we built a series of 41 on-campus events to connect students directly with Vodafone employees. We carefully chose our campuses based on those with the highest female-to-male ratios for tech degrees, as a way to help us drive up female applications.

THE RESULTS

The campaign comfortably exceeded Vodafone’s expectations.

  • We generated over 16,000 applications – beating our target by 60%.
  • We increased the number of female candidates by 23%.
  • We increased Instagram impressions by 89.3% (post-campaign vs. pre-campaign).
  • We saw 1.5 million Facebook impressions.
  • We gained 6.8 million impressions on organic posts on LinkedIn.
  • We created a hyper-targeted paid Facebook campaign which produced 390,510 impressions and 2,541 clicks – all from the target audience.

These numbers are backed up by audience sentiment. We improved Vodafone’s reputation as an employer significantly, jumping 27 places in the Times Top 100 rankings. As a result of its success, Vodafone asked us to develop the concept for their apprentice campaign audience and roll it out through a new assessment process design.

AT A GLANCE

  • COMPANY: Vodafone
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Talent Advisory
  • ABOUT VODAFONE: Vodafone is a British multinational telecommunications company. They provide connectivity and digital services for over 300 million people to work, learn, stay in touch with friends and family, access healthcare and more.
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Virtual Volume Hiring for Front-Line Workers

Posted on by nfuqua

PeopleScout has been working with a large telecommunications company for more than seven years. The company supplies telephone, television and internet services to customers throughout the UK.

PeopleScout provides RPO services for volume hiring to the client’s front-line workers. In the highly competitive telecommunications industry, the client needs to ensure the company attracts the very best talent, particularly across their sales and technician functions. This fast-paced market requires an agile partner who can respond to quickly changing requirements.

Scope and Scale

PeopleScout manages up to 16 different volume vacancy types, or about 60-70% of all external hiring.

Situation

The client had recently decided to reduce the number of sub-contractors and outsourcers for front-line jobs. PeopleScout had been briefed to replace these workers with permanent employees.

As the UK started restrictions for COVID-19, some of the company’s outsourced overseas contact centers were threatened with the risk of closure due to lockdown in those countries. To maintain excellent service, the client created more than 550 new contact center jobs in the UK, to help keep customers connected during this critical time.

The task was to find 550 new starters within two months of the project launch, using a completely redesigned process while taking into account social distancing measures. Candidates would not be able to attend assessment centers and interviews onsite, contact center managers would not have the capacity to interview while maintaining stringent service levels and right to work/onboarding checks could not go ahead using a visual review of original documentation as normal.

Additionally, the client introduced a number of protocols to ensure its people remained as safe as possible while continuing to help answer customer calls and queries. This included providing remote working capabilities where possible and flexible working patterns.

Solution

An agile working group was formed and met twice daily to track project implementation and delivery progress. A new virtual hiring process was designed and implemented in less than two weeks. PeopleScout fast-tracked application and assessment by using video interviews, dramatically reducing processing time and allowing candidates to be selected within days and start within weeks.

To generate candidates, PeopleScout built a new page on the client’s careers site and created an enhanced attraction plan to drive applicants there. This included diverting existing candidates (whose roles had been cancelled) into the new process and creating two microsites to improve quality of applications and speed-up hiring – a hints-and-tips site and a site illustrating the overall application process.

Hiring capacity was ramped up, using PeopleScout’s global delivery centers to score nearly 5,000 video interviews and to support the onboarding of successful candidates without delay.

Results

  • Delivered 5,550 new applications
  • Conducted more than 1,800 online video interviews
  • Completed 400 final stage qualification calls
  • Made nearly 300 offers within four weeks
  • Created a hiring manager audit step with 95% of qualified candidates approved for hire

Process Improvement

Throughout this agile process, PeopleScout continually used data to understand where interventions could be made to improve the recruitment journey. We created two microsites to help prepare candidates for each step of the process.

The sites were created, signed-off and live within the first three weeks of go-live. They enabled candidates to find out more about key steps in the process such as getting access to an onboarding site which outlines what they need to do prior to starting, as well as what happens on day one.

Client Feedback

“Due to the COVID-19 situation, we needed a new hiring process in an extremely short period of time. In less than two weeks, PeopleScout had candidates moving swiftly through the process. PeopleScout’s agility ensured candidates could start within one month of applying.

As the situation continued, we found that we needed additional onboarding support. PeopleScout created microsites to educate and move people through the process which, at the same time, reduced email traffic to our teams.

Most importantly, PeopleScout has helped us build a new level of trust with our hiring managers, enabling us to work in a far more efficient and safe way. The success of this project means that we now have a new way of recruiting to build on in the future.”

-Client, Head of Resourcing

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Openreach: Recruiting for Hard-to-Fill Roles at Scale

Posted on by skatz

Openreach approached us to help recruit for hard-to-fill trainee engineer positions. Our postal code-by-postal code attraction and simplified recruitment process enabled Openreach to fill all roles and to increase applications from diverse candidates.

Scope and Scale

Openreach approached us to support them with the delivery of 413 trainee engineer hires for hotspot locations in Southern England. These were roles in hard-to-fill locations, where Openreach’s traditional approach hadn’t been able to generate sufficient applications.

Situation

Openreach recruits 3,500 trainee engineers on an annual basis, with a large proportion of hires made in areas with strong candidate pipelines. However, hiring in Southern England and London proved challenging. So, they were looking for a targeted attraction campaign, along with an efficient recruitment process, to help them complete 413 hires in these areas in three months.

Solution

SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS
  • Microsite hub
  • Bespoke, postal code-tailored attraction program
  • Simplified application process
  • All roles filled with increased diversity interest
MICROSITE HUB

We worked with Openreach to scope and build a microsite to act as the hub for trainee engineer hiring. 

TAILORING BY POSTAL CODE

Deploying a bespoke attraction program by specific postal codes allowed us to be highly targeted in driving candidate pipelines. All attraction materials drove candidates to the microsite. 

LIGHT-TOUCH PROCESS

In addition, we developed a light-touch simplified recruitment process, which included video interviews and a one-page online application. 

Results

FILLED IN THREE MONTHS

From sign-off to implementation, the service was set up, configured and ready to go live in six weeks – and all 413 roles were filled within three months. 

DIVERSITY BOOST 

Nearly 70 percent of applications in London postal codes were from diverse candidates, with this translating to a 53 percent offer rate. 

TRANSFORMATIONAL

Openreach has said that collaborating with us has been “transformational,” and we’re now working with them on 150 additional hires.

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A Higher Performing Recruiting Model

Posted on by Kate

A major telecom provider faced multiple recruiting challenges as a result of its decentralized and fragmented recruitment processes. PeopleScout partnered with this provider to implement a first-generation RPO program to migrate from a decentralized pre-RPO state to a higher-performing recruiting model. The implementation was a great success and established the foundation for an RPO program that supported more than 1,400 stores and nearly 13,000 hires for retail positions in 2018 and improved the average time-to-clear from 11 days to eight days.

Scope and Scale

In 2017, PeopleScout was hired by a major telecommunications carrier to implement a first-generation RPO at more than one thousand stores. The implementation established the foundation for an RPO program that today supports more than 1,400 stores and nearly 13,000 hires. 

Situation

The telecom provider wanted to reduce store-to-store inconsistencies and migrate from a highly decentralized pre-RPO state into a high-performing model. The provider wanted to improve response times to seasonal demands and decrease poor candidate quality and below-average customer experiences.

Solution

SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS
  • Centralization and standardization of the recruitment process
  • Scalable recruitment model to address changes in hiring needs
  • Targeted and innovative grassroots and digital sourcing strategy
INNOVATIVE, TARGETED SOURCING

PeopleScout implemented a consistent workflow for the company’s businesses and initiated digital interviewing with additional screening. Adding additional screening reduced the hiring manager’s overall involvement in the process and created efficiencies. PeopleScout also facilitated “same day interview, next day offer” practices to qualified candidates.

BRANDING PARTNERSHIP

The telecom provider provided a library of images for use in digital and advertising campaigns that greatly enhanced recruitment marketing. PeopleScout and the telecom talent acquisition partner collaborated closely to make sure outbound marketing was appropriate and of interest.

Results

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP

A targeted and innovative sourcing strategy and a solid branding partnership were influential in the program’s evolution. In 2018, PeopleScout hired nearly 13,000 employees for this telecom provider and improved average time-to-clear from 11 days to eight days. The scope of work also expanded into a strategic partnership with one of the world’s largest pharmacies where the telecom provider’s products could be sold at additional retail locations.

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