Cielo undertook a strategic partnership with a global apparel and footwear company that saw us deliver around 400 hires across a number of countries in Asia Pacific, through our Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) solution.
The challenge
The 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 to partner with an RPO provider 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 to enable the recruitment strategy.
Prior to engaging Cielo, all of the company’s career opportunities were posted on multiple advertising platforms and sourcing channels, resulting 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.
Cielo was chosen as its talent acquisition partner for this critical hiring need.
The solution and results
Cielo approached the challenge with a two-pronged approach. First, the team put together a structured process to prioritise the business-critical roles and align with the business on the hiring plan for the whole project. Secondly, the recruitment delivery team was scaled quickly with in-country as well as offshore resources, to effectively and efficiently engage with and screen all the 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. The client 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 and 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 ensured that the company was able to deliver the appropriate and authentic employee value proposition in each of the markets and generate strong demand for the job opportunities that it had to offer.
Cielo’s talent market insights 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 to ensure the client has a repository of screened and shortlisted talent for their 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, and equally important was providing a superior experience for the client and the candidate communities. Some of the key achievements for this project include:
- Successfully hired c.400 candidates across 4 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 utilisation 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 sourcing plan
- Designed and delivered dashboard tracking for progress reviews and decision making
Cielo’s VP for Client Solutions, Kumar Bhaya says:
“Having open and transparent communication, being accountable for results and delivering on commitments, is what long standing partnerships are built on, and we are both grateful and privileged to have earned our client’s trust to be their talent acquisition partner for this important project".
