Allergan’s Talent Acquisition Transformation

CHALLENGE
Allergan needed bold-thinking talent in the ever-changing Life Sciences space to allow them to evolve their organization and maximize new business opportunities.

SOLUTION
Allergan is a global pharmaceutical company committed to delivering innovative and meaningful treatments that help people around the world live longer, healthier lives. Fueled by an Open Science R&D model, Allergan understands that innovation and game-changing ideas can come from not just their own labs, but also from partnerships with smaller biotechnology and pharma companies. Allergan’s commitment to fostering innovation and strategic partnerships expands beyond R&D. With 17,000+ global colleagues, Allergan still needed the flexibility and scalability to source and engage bold-thinking talent in the ever-changing Life Sciences space to allow them to evolve their organization and maximize new business opportunities. Allergan began their Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) partnership with Cielo in 2015, to help streamline and optimize their talent acquisition process for business growth. Cielo’s dedicated team centralized Allergan’s talent acquisition function to support Global Functions, Commercial Sales, Operations (Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Engineering, Quality) and R&D. Since the inception of the partnership, Cielo and Allergan have partnered through multiple expansions, acquisitions and divestitures, allowing Allergan to continue to build one of the broadest development pipelines in the pharmaceutical industry.

BUSINESS IMPACT

• Created Scale and Flexibility
  • Designed an RPO partnership model able to support the merger of three large organizations, including the change management and technology expertise required to streamline three different ATS and background check vendors
  • Scaled the team size by more than double since the start of the partnership to drive results for volume fluctuations caused by double-digit acquisitions, divestitures and multiple sales expansions
• Boosted Strategic Sourcing
  • Since the start of the partnership in 2015, Cielo’s dedicated recruiters have sourced, engaged and hired over 4,000 employees
  • Direct-sourced candidates from the Talent Acquisition team quickly increased to the second-leading source of hire, following internal hires
• Decreased Agency Usage
  • Overall agency usage has dropped from almost 20% in 2015 to 5% in 2017
  • Agency support for Sales has decreased from 14% to 6%, saving over $600K since the start of the partnership

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP
Allergan and Cielo’s partnership is continuously driving initiatives to support the business and deliver new value. 

Candidate Care
In an era of instant gratification and personalization, Allergan and Cielo saw the opportunity to put renewed focus on the candidate experience to stay ahead of industry trends and candidate expectations. The team launched several strategies to elevate the candidate experience. Text campaigns are used to remind candidates about interview schedules and share essential information like office locations. A Tip Guide was created to assist candidates in bringing their best selves to on-site interviews. This high-tech and high-touch approach, which also includes personalized “good luck” emails sent to candidates before their interview and on their first day, has helped boost candidate engagement and truly reflects Allergan’s culture of caring for the well-being of others.

Diversity Recruiting
To fuel Allergan’s Bold Culture, the talent acquisition team has placed a focus on partnership and promotion to engage and recruit a diverse talent pool. In 2017, they launched a partnership with RallyPoint, an online community of service members and veterans, to promote Allergan as an employer of choice. Since launch, the talent acquisition team has garnered over 870k job impressions. Allergan has also focused on recruiting diverse candidates through targeted digital campaigns, social media and dynamic Recruitment Marketing Plans utilizing specific Diversity & Inclusion-focused job boards.

Technology
Just as the biopharmaceutical industry continues to innovate, the recruiting landscape is increasingly dynamic. Allergan and Cielo stay ahead of the curve by searching out and implementing new technology tools that work to improve the recruitment process both for the candidates and the company.

• To stay top-of-mind with Millennials and new graduates, the talent acquisition team has employed the use of Virtual Career Fairs and video interviewing to tailor the recruiting approach to tech-savvy talent looking for convenient ways to engage. Handshake, an online career network that connects schools, students, alumni and employers, has also been a valuable technology tool to connect with new talent.
• For critical roles in the Customer Service function, on-demand video interviewing was implemented to speed up time to hire and increase the quality of candidates. As on-demand video interviewing can be new to some, text and automated voice messages are sent in advance of a video screen to explain the process and provide tips for success.
• SkyRecruit, Cielo’s exclusive CRM, enables recruiters to source and build talent pools, engage candidates with text and email campaigning, and simplify a part of the hiring process with self-scheduling for interviews. With large sales classes or expansions, SkyRecruit automates and tracks critical onboarding paperwork reminders to ensure there are no delays in start dates. SkyRecruit continues to support Allergan candidates even after they are hired. As part of a reimagined Employee Referral Program, SkyRecruit sends emails to new hires at their 90-day mark to check in and introduce the referral program and benefits.