In the run-up to the In-house Recruitment Awards on the 4th December, CEO of Candidate.id Adam Gordon had a chat with Jared Massey Operations Director from Hudson RPO about Sharp’s in-house recruitment team. They were shortlisted for ‘Best RPO Onsite In-house Recruitment Team’. So, what’s the secret to their success?
Direct hiring model
Hudson RPO have been able to deliver 3 consecutive quarters of no agency hiring. In late 2017, the Sharp UK (Business Systems & European Electronics) RPO service went live and was a first-generation recruitment model. Prior hiring had been agency reliant and heavy in cost, with no centralised recruitment function, and minimal employment brand awareness.
Hudson RPO introduced a direct hiring model, incorporating multi-functional recruitment delivery dealing with all recruitment from Engineers to Executive positions. They slowly introduced a program to raise the awareness and interest in the Sharp Brand.
They are now in the second year of the programme and have improved the costs and time to hire for Sharp in the UK. Hudson RPO have since rolled out the programme to other regions in EMEA – Nordics & France, Germany and the Netherlands.
There have been and remain 3 main areas of focus for them:
- Time
- Cost
- Quality
Interview skills workshops
They have now trained 85 hiring managers across the UK in recruitment best practise and interview skills workshops. Hudson RPO identified a skills gap and a lack of a thorough understanding within the business as to why setting best practice in the recruitment and interview process was so important.
Careers microsite
Earlier in the year they have built a careers microsite to sit within their own corporate website. This has included videos of employees within Sharp sharing their stories, the aim being to improve the EVP and increase applications. It demonstrates what it really is like to work at Sharp and how the business has changed but also continues to provide great opportunities to develop.
Candidate engagement
The introduction of the RPO ATS has enabled the tracking of the candidate journey throughout the application process in a way that wasn’t possible before. They are able to ensure that all applications are acknowledged and given an outcome, and also make it easy for applicants to apply through clear adverts and job descriptions and communicate with shortlisted candidates during each step of the hiring process. Advice is given on how to prepare for interviews and ensure candidates get interview feedback as quickly as possible.
Results
The Sharp solution in the UK has an in-house recruitment team of just 2 people. However, the metrics are pretty impressive. From Q3 2018 – Q2 2019 they were 77 roles opened and 71 roles were filled to date.
Time-to-shortlist – by Q2 2019 they were hitting a quarterly average of 4.3 days.
Time-to-hire – Q3 2018 30.6 days, Q4 2018 20.5 days, Q1 2019 18.8 days, Q2 2019 30.9 days, this is against an SLA of 40 days, from briefing to offer accepted.
Cost – Hudson RPO were able to reduce Sharp’s cost to hire by 31.25%.
Agency use has reduced to 0 since the new team started in Q3 2018, agency use that quarter was 22%, but since then every single role has been filled by direct means, be that direct sourcing, internals or referrals.
It’s no surprise that over the last 12 months they have achieved 100% satisfaction from the Hiring Managers.
Partner
Candidate.ID is a talent pipeline software platform which enables the most sophisticated talent nurture marketing available in recruitment. Our data and insight technology allows recruiters to understand who is merely aware and who is warm for opportunities with your organisation in real time. We launched in September 2016, were acknowledged as one of the most disruptive startups in HR tech the following month and now enable multi-national employers to create more personalised candidate experience, enhance quality-of-shortlist and reduce time-to-shortlist.
