Telefónica gains competitive advantage in recruiting with RPO

Challenges

Agency usage, costs and time to hire

Telefónica UK, a leading provider of mobile and digital services, originally sought a talent acquisition partner to curb agency usage, reduce costs and improve time to hire. Over the course of the partnership, Telefónica has realized the competitive advantage that comes from strategic alignment between talent acquisition and the business.

From the onset, Telefónica’s Recruitment Process Outsourcing partnership with Cielo – which began in 2009 – centered around the strategic objectives:

1. Have the right talent in the right place at the right time
2. Do things faster, smarter and better

To accomplish these objectives, Cielo adopted Telefónica’s culture, brand and values. The team went on-site and split into two focus areas:

• The delivery team: Focused on delivering excellent service to candidates and hiring managers, this team is responsible for direct sourcing and pipelining, leading to the results originally sought from the partnership: lower overall recruitment costs and an improved time to hire.
• The strategic team: Focused on engagement with business leaders and HR, the strategic team aligns talent acquisition with the business’ strategic agenda by delivering data and insights that inform continuous improvement and value-add activities.

Ultimately, it was Cielo's role to determine which changes could be made to address Telefónica's key recruiting challenges:

• Quality of hire
• Cost per hire
• Time to hire
• Agency usage
• Preferred supplier numbers
• New hire diversity

Solutions

Reenergizing Telefonica’s recruiting strategy

Telefónica’s employee value proposition is “Discover, Disrupt and Deliver.”  The Cielo embedded teams embody these key values every day.

Discover
From the onset of the partnership, the teams analyzed and assessed the challenges facing Telefónica – not just within talent acquisition, but across the organization – and took deliberate steps to solve core business problems through talent solutions. With Cielo as an invested strategic partner, challenges were prioritized with fresh eyes to make sure results are achieved fast.

Telefónica originally sought a partner to curb agency usage/costs and improve time to hire. Since partnership inception, annual agency spend has been reduced to just 7.8% of the previous spend. Agency usage also decreased to less than 2%, with now fewer than 20 agencies being used, down from more than 80. External time to hire before the partnership was 52 days. In 2015, it was reduced to 29 days for external hires and to 21 days for internal hires.

Disrupt
Together, Cielo and Telefónica remain committed to continuous improvement as the only way to guarantee they “do things faster, smarter and better” – one of the partnership objectives. One of these initiatives supported was the implementation of a new ATS, CRM and the associated careers site refresh. The initiative goal was to enhance the candidate experience. This involved rebranding as well as refreshing recruitment campaigns, candidate attraction communications and materials, and the candidate’s digital experience.

Deliver
Focused on delivering excellent service to candidates and hiring managers, the delivery team guarantees Telefónica “have the right talent in the right place at the right time” – the second partnership objective. The partnership’s resourcing business partners were embedded within the business to fully understand future transformations to new products and services that may change the demand for external skills. This allows the recruitment team to pipeline effectively and be a proactive talent solution not just reactive.

Results

Competitive advantage in recruiting for Telefónica

The Cielo talent acquisition team delivers solutions as Telefónica employees, for the benefit of the business. Beyond managing the recruitment process, the team enables internal mobility, supports the hiring of graduates, interns and apprentices, supports major change and transformation programs, and assists with strategic and operational workforce planning.

Results since the partnership began include:

• Increased quality-of-hire, including adopting psychometric testing
• Hiring more than 850 managerial and specialist roles per year
• Decreased time-to-hire from 52 days pre-Cielo to an average of 29 days for external hires and 21 days for internal hires
• Decreased cost-per-hire by 78% from costs pre-Cielo
• Reduced agency usage to under 2% of hires
• Streamlined preferred supplier list from 80+ agencies pre-Cielo to less than 20
• Increased female hires by 4 percentage points

Telefónica and Cielo have sustained a successful partnership for more than seven years with consistently outstanding results because of the pride the team takes in delivering better experiences for the business and candidates. The focus remains on doing the right thing for the long-term future of the organization, not just short-term KPIs. 

The team is truly embedded in the business, is involved in early stages of transformations, and joins leadership and HR meetings as the internal talent acquisition experts. Telefónica and Cielo are constantly evolving, exploring new technologies and ways to illuminate talent that aligns with business priorities.

Telefónica has benefited from a proactive recruitment process that has elevated the quality of talent joining the organization. Because of this, Cielo has earned additional opportunities to support the Telefónica family, assisting other areas outside of O2 UK, including Wayra, giffgaff, Tesco Mobile, Weve and Telefónica Digital.