How a leading global chemical company cut agency usage from 80% to 10% by building a best-in-class internal recruitment function
After an internal review, one of the world's leading global chemical companies built out its own internal recruitment function, establishing Talent Acquisition Consulting teams across Asia Pacific and EMEA. Using SocialTalent's e-learning platform to upskill its TA teams into full life cycle consultants and to train dedicated sourcing centers, the company reduced its reliance on external recruitment agencies from over 80% to below 10%.
After an internal review, one of the world's leading global chemical companies made the decision to build out its own internal recruitment function. Its goal was to create a best-in-class recruitment organization. Integral to this was the need to establish Talent Acquisition Consulting teams across both Asia Pacific and EMEA to drive hiring excellence.
Previously, HR had managed recruitment and preferred to use external recruitment agencies. With agency usage rates in excess of 80%, there was a strong desire to reduce these costs, and to gain greater control and influence over the hiring process, as well as drive consistency in hiring best practices globally.
With tens of thousands of employees across the globe, one of the challenges facing the company was driving better alignment between the Talent Acquisition teams and hiring managers. It wanted to develop its TA teams' consultative skills so they could better partner with the business. It was very important for hiring managers to see them as true business partners.
Another challenge facing the organization was finding enough of the right candidates fast enough for the business. The company wanted to reduce its time to hire while maintaining the highest quality of candidates. It knew it needed an efficient candidate sourcing engine to enable the company to deliver enough candidates to the TA consultants without having to rely on external agencies.
One TA consultant in one of the Asian Talent Hubs was hired in December 2019, having never sourced or used LinkedIn before. She was trained on the SocialTalent platform and by February 2020 she had sourced, shortlisted and hired a candidate in Japan, saving the company $35,000-$40,000 in agency fees on a single hire.
Delivered the expertise to upskill TA teams into full life cycle consultants.
Tailored to the different needs and levels of sourcing specialists, from beginner to advanced.
Used to continually develop and enhance the skills of TA consultants and sourcing teams.
Enabled a globally consistent approach to hiring best practices across regions.
- Owning and managing the candidate experience and the full life cycle of the hiring process were treated as key building blocks of a strong internal recruitment function.
- The strategy was to train the TA teams in both Asia and EMEA to become TA consultants who manage the 360° life cycle, from sourcing to hiring.
- SocialTalent was chosen to deliver industry-leading hiring training and upskill the Talent Acquisition teams into full life cycle TA consultants.
- The aim was to empower teams to manage the full hiring life cycle end to end and become true business partners to hiring managers, with SocialTalent used to continually develop and enhance their skills.
- The company created additional candidate sourcing centers — two in Asia and one in Europe — focused exclusively on sourcing and delivering enough candidates to the TA consultants.
- The goals were twofold: supplement the consultants' sourcing efforts to fill immediate open requisitions quickly, and allocate time and resources to building healthy pipelines of talent, as agreed with the hiring community and Talent Management.
- SocialTalent provides ongoing online training and development to the sourcing teams in the talent hubs, empowering them with the latest best practices in how to source the best candidates.
- Learning paths were created specific to the different needs and levels of sourcing specialists — from beginners to advanced — with high engagement driven by TA leaders on a regional level.
Reducing external agency usage from 80% to 10% while developing regional hiring excellence
As a result of the ongoing training for the sourcing teams, and the comprehensive training to enable the TA Consulting teams with the 360° knowledge of the hiring process, reliance on recruitment agencies now trends below 10%. With previous recruitment agency usage rates in excess of 80% prior to building out its own internal recruitment function, reducing these rates to below 10% represents a very significant decrease in agency usage and spend for the company.
Driving alignment between hiring managers and TA resulting in better quality of hires
And crucially for the TA Consulting teams, they have reported a strengthening in the relationship between talent acquisition consultants and hiring managers, resulting in much better alignment than previously seen. The business trusts in the ability of the consultants to consistently and efficiently deliver quality candidates. By growing their consultative skills, the TA teams are seen internally as partners.
Elevating the candidate experience
By equipping the TA consultants with the skills to manage the entire hiring life cycle and drive a consistent approach to hiring practices across all their regions, this has enabled the company to significantly improve and elevate their candidate experience.
Reducing the time to fill positions
Lastly, the company has also reported a reduction in its time to fill positions. Creating an efficient candidate sourcing engine in the form of the company's talent hubs, or sourcing centers, has been a huge contributor to this. One of the benefits to creating these laser focused sourcing centers, and having a repeatable process for quickly training up new sourcing specialists, is that it makes it easy for the company to quickly scale up its recruitment efforts in the event of increased hiring needs.