Battle Scorecard

view Cases

  • 2 Won
  • 8 Lost
  • £650,720,000 Saved
  • £1534224164 Cost

The Great Turnaround

Tuesday, August 21, 2007   

The Role : Head of Technology

 

The Hiring Circumstance –  This £750 million t/o company had led its world market for many years, but had fallen behind a competitor which had innovated a new technology that had completely revolutionised the industry.

The company in question had invested heavily in advertising and conventional head-hunting in an attempt to attract one of the few people who had expertise required.  Despite an expenditure of over £125,000, this early strategy had failed.

The reality of the situation was that, without the new skills, the company's products would be reliant on old technology, rendering sales of new systems non-existent.

The ultimate consequence that the company would be reduced to being a supplier of spare parts to its obsolete products, causing 70% of the global workforce to be made redundant and reducing turnover to sub £100million within five years.

The Strategy –  Head-hunters, using conventional job-title, salary, role and company profile information had previously failed.  The new strategy adopted followed similar lines (there's only so many ways to recruit!), but it was level and detail of the information to be communicated that had been changed.

The #1 target had already rebuffed that head-hunters, stating that, at 55 years old, he was on a slow slope down to early retirement on the golf course! However, having captured the chairman's vision for the  company's future - and how this person would fit into this vision, the 'best practice' recruiter was able to take truly compelling opportunity information directly to the relevant person.

The Consequence –  Re-approaching the #1 person at the #1 company with the new information, the recruiter succeeded in reigniting this person's passion for work to the extent that, not only did he accept the role, but he relocated his family from Switzerland to Germany and attracted six key people into the business with him.

Now, thanks to best practice, rather than all but closing down its operations, this company is now re-established as #1 in the market.

The Saving - £650million in sales+ removing the threat of redundancy for 70% of the workforce......

...... all because the leader at the head of the company had the common sense to realise that hiring needed to be on his agenda.

 

 

© Copyright www.ftwoan.org 2007 - please credit where shared or reproduced.

Categories:

Skip to Comments

Browse by Category

silouette.gif

 

"The candidate congratulated the board on its hiring practice; that's never happened before"

HR Manager

 

Post a Comment

2 Comments so far

Thursday, September 27, 2007 by Peter Schofield

Sorry I missed this post until now, SG (note to self to ask webmaster why?).

You make some very poignant observations and I wholeheartedly agree with your point about the difference between the HR approach to hiring and that of the recruiter.

Recruitment has always been part of the HR's role, but up until the past eight years or so, it's been something of an administrative formality, as there'd largely been more qualified people seeking work than companies seeking people. In such case, the role of HR was one of selection, compliance and administration of the process.

Today, of course, with immense pressure on business margins and people no longer chasing work, recruitment is now a skill in its own right, but to understand why there's such a gap between the HR and recruiter approach, one only has to look at the focus of training.

It's changed very recently, but only 18 months ago a colleague sent me a CIPD endorsed training course run by Trent Business School which, on it's very first page, stated that it was an employers market. This is despite the fact that the CIPD website at that time held a report saying 83% of employers were struggling to find and keep good people!

Conversely, when I first worked on the recruitment side of the fence 20+ years ago, the main training focus was sales - how to overcome the objections from Personnel departments who didn't want unqualified people interfering on their patch.

Today, as I'm sure you'll agree, although recruiters have developed into far more strategic and business-centric animals than their 70's / 80's counterparts, skills shortages mean they need to use their sales skills again, although in a different fashion.

What I particularly like about this case study is that it shows the recruiter, the HRD and the CEO working in harmony on the business case. Yes, sales skills were needed to get a sensible conversation going with a candidate who had been approached about the same role on numerous occasions, but it was the business and behavioural consultative angle that won the day. Without that, the recruiter was in the position of trying to sell sand to an Arab.

Going back to your point about using instinct, although I agree with you, the danger is in the starting point - i.e. does the employer REALLY need an 'X'. I don't mind admitting that I am living proof of what can happen when relying purely on instinct. The one time I didn't follow my own process to bring someone into my own business, it ultimately cost about £1.5million in a lost contract!

Thursday, September 13, 2007 by SG

This example is an ideal illustration of what the fundamental needs of a good recruiter are - they are essentially sales people and ambassadors for the company and therefore must have an understanding of how to establish the 'USP's of a n organisation, find out what a candidates drivers and hot buttons are, and then map the job proposition (or 'sell'!) the opportnity to the candidate. Thsi works not only in high level individual hires but also at the high volume end of the recruitment cycle. I have worked as Recruitment Mngr for 20 years in large and small companies and when you look at the personality traits of HR vs Recruiters, they are like night and day. HR Managers historically do not make good Recruitment Managers and vice versa - does anyone know a large corporate HR Manager who are good or natural sales people?? I think not. This leads to conflict between the two functions and also tends to lead to problems with Recrutment Mngrs and the Client group who are used to HR types and perhaps are overawed or simply do not like the more assertive types that tent to run Recruitment Departments. Would love to see if anyone out there agrees with me. Also, everybody thinks they have an opinion on good recruitment practice and that it is simply a matter of common sense. Your site here and the problems companbies are ahving proves that you need to leave this important role to the specialists, and heed their advice. When you have interviewed circa 30,000 candidates over the span of a long recrutment career, you tend to get to know what works and what does not and any amount of science and academic approach to the problem cannot replace visceral instinct. Unfortunately, an HR Director will tell you that instinct carries no currency in the corporate world and that as long as you stick to a Competency based interview, this will be the panacea to all your problems.