High-volume hiring and TA strategic initiatives in Asia

Challenges

Critical hiring needs

A global apparel and footwear company was undergoing a business transformation exercise which saw the movement and creation of a few hundred roles in key Asian markets including China, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia.

To address this increased demand outside of its business-as-usual hiring, the company looked for an Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) partner who could not only help fill the open positions with the right talent, but who also had a strong understanding of these markets and could bring the relevant talent insights and knew how to hire high-volume for strategic initiatives. 

Prior to engaging Cielo, all of the company’s career opportunities were posted on multiple advertising platforms and sourcing channels. This resulted in over 6,000 applicants sitting in the funnel, with little to no engagement, thus presenting a challenge from a candidate experience and employer brand perspective.

The retail company chose Cielo as its talent acquisition partner for this critical hiring need.

Solutions

A two-pronged approach

Cielo approached the challenge with a two-pronged approach:

1. The team put together a strategic initiative to prioritize the business-critical roles and align with the business on the hiring plan for the whole project.
2. The recruitment delivery team was scaled quickly with in-country and offshore resources to effectively and efficiently engage/screen all 6,000 applicants in the client’s database.

The Cielo Market Insights team was engaged to provide the talent demand and supply view for the company’s critical functions across the target markets. Dedicated Cielo recruiters worked with the client leadership and communications team on the appropriate brand messaging and employee value proposition to take to the candidates in a highly competitive talent market.

With this foundation in place, the Cielo recruiters commenced the recruitment drive on the first wave of positions. Based on initial feedback from candidate conversations, the hiring managers were invited for check-point calls where market intelligence was shared and there was recalibration done on the job requirements as well as the brand messaging. This iterative approach made sure the company delivered the appropriate and authentic employee value proposition in each of the markets and generated strong demand for the job opportunities that it had to offer.

Cielo’s talent market insights and strategic initiatives also helped the business make location choices for some of its roles based on skills supply, and this helped to hire all of the critical roles within the target timelines with very little use of recruitment agencies, and all this while ensuring that the applicants and the hiring managers received a best-in-class hiring experience.

To further support the company’s talent acquisition over the long term, Cielo rolled out an engaged talent pipelining initiative. This was so the client would have a repository of screened and shortlisted talent for critical and niche talent needs – in the near as well as longer term.

Given the business-critical nature of the hiring project, meeting all hiring SLAs was extremely important for the partnership. Equally important was providing a superior experience for the client and the candidate communities.

Results

Some of the key achievements for this project include:

• Successfully hired about 400 candidates across four key markets in the APAC region over 8 months
• Took an average of 35 days to fill each role against the SLA of 60 days
• Kept total agency utilization at 6%, lower than the target SLA of 10%
• Provided market insights across all business divisions at key stages in the hiring project to help them make informed hiring decisions
• Re-designed talent sourcing strategy with a multi-faceted multi-channel strategic initiatives for sourcing
• Designed and delivered dashboard tracking for progress reviews and decision-making