High-volume Hiring for SAS

Founded in 1976, SAS is a global leader in the provision of business analytics software and services, and employs over 11,000 people at 400 offices in more than 50 countries. SAS helps organisations across all industries realize the full potential of their greatest asset: data. Simply put, SAS allows its clients to transform data about customers, performance, financials and more into information and predictive insight that lays the groundwork for solid and coherent decisions. That is why SAS is used at more than 50,000 sites in over 100 countries.

CLIENT CHALLENGE
The UK and continental operations of SAS were employing a recruitment model that needed to cope with high volumes of hiring in highly competitive labor markets that were very complex and heavily dependent on the use of a wide range of external agencies. The company therefore decided to explore the use of a dedicated partner that could deliver a smarter, faster solution and reduce overall costs. Following a competitive tender process involving three Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) specialists, SAS opted to work with Cielo because of the flexibility of its approach, the scalability of its model and the close cultural fit between the two companies.

CREATING THE SOLUTION
Cielo quickly took over responsibility for all delivery aspects of the hiring process embedding an initial team of two, which has over time grown to four onsite with SAS. The team handles all hiring for SAS’s UK operations, including new graduates, professional services such as implementation consultancy, project management and technical architecture, sales, pre-sales, legal, finance and HR. Cielo also provides ad hoc support in the recruitment of senior professionals across other areas in the EMEA region through its centralized executive search function.

In the partnership's seventh year, Cielo has now extended the support it provides to SAS into several key, value-added areas. The team has, for example, worked closely with SAS to enhance its workforce planning capacity, providing in-depth intelligence on the external employment market and allowing SAS to align its talent plan to its commercial strategy.

DELIVERING RESULTS

• Hires completed mainly in the UK, but also in CEE, Dubai, Egypt, France, Germany and Nigeria
• Average hiring time reduced from 87 to 43 days
• Average cost-per-hire reduced by 32%
• Recruitment via agency reduced to 10% of total
• Employer brand defined and enhanced to raise awareness of SAS amongst potential employees
• SAS HR freed up to focus on business partner role
• SAS and Cielo partnership now into its seventh consecutive year

Learn about Cielo's new high-volume hiring solution that takes a technology-first approach to delivering top talent. With intelligent automation that integrates into your existing recruiting process, we can help you hire quality candidates at scale.