Transforming talent acquisition for Smiths Medical

Challenges

Imagining better for talent acquisition at Smiths Medical

Despite more than 25 years of global growth, Smiths Medical lacked a fully functional applicant tracking system. It also didn’t have a centralized, cost-effective recruitment solution. 

Another challenge: high expenses due to high agency usage. Leadership found that over 50% of the department’s spend was aligned to transactional recruitment, limiting HR’s ability to focus on business strategy and employee engagement.

Ultimately, Smiths Medical decided it didn’t possess the internal resources, skills or technologies for in-house recruitment. At least not without increasing expenditures beyond budgetary means and/or implementing in a time-effective manner.

Solutions

Collaborating to rethink talent acquisition

Smiths Medical transitioned end-to-end talent acquisition (job scoping through onboarding) to Cielo, with two ultimate goals in mind:

1. Optimize recruitment productivity in a cost-effective way
2. Shift to a proactive approach 

The organization’s dedicated team of recruiters and talent acquisition professionals – now known as “Team STAT” (Smiths Medical Talent Acquisition Team) – designed a custom people, process and technology solution. Team STAT quickly integrated and became an extension of the internal HR team. The team attended routine training programs, regularly made on-site visits to consult with leadership, established an impactful social recruiting presence, and launched improvement initiatives such as:

• Quarterly and annual business reviews with Smiths Medical senior leadership
• Developing a hiring manager handbook
• Completing text and email campaigns
• Integrating video interviewing technology
• Establishing diversity, equity, and inclusion awareness programs

The dedicated team has also helped Smiths Medical implement a requisition management process, institute hiring manager and candidate satisfaction surveys, as well as conduct regular employee reviews. Not only have these initiatives enhanced employee and candidate experience, but Team STAT’s commitment to transparency and frequent reporting on the status of key performance indicators has made the ROI evident and secured Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) buy-in from leadership at all levels.

Truly consultative partnership with Smiths Medical

Being a truly strategic partner requires more than recruiting quality talent. It calls for flexibility, innovative thinking, and proactive scalability – especially in the life sciences industry. Less than two months into the implementation phase, Smiths Medical came to Cielo with an additional high-priority project: rapid niche hiring for highly skilled research and development professionals in global geographies with limited talent pools. Failure wasn’t an option – Smiths Medical faced immediate financial consequences if hiring goals weren’t met.

Cielo’s scalability and flexibility allowed the organization to meet all hiring needs within the project’s tight time constraints and without impacting implementation of the contractual partnership. Cielo’s responsiveness to this challenging project laid the groundwork for a trustworthy, proactive and consultative partnership that continues today. Less than a year later, phase II of this project arose. Using lessons from the first project, proactive scalability was incorporated into the model and the Smiths Medical team paved the way for seamless project delivery.

Results

Bold strategies = Bold talent for Smiths Medical

Less than two years into the partnership, hiring manager satisfaction increased, cost per hire reached an all-time low, and agency spend was significantly less. Financial advantages aside, through continued partnership with Cielo, the Smiths Medical HR team has driven necessary culture change across the organization – proving that while RPO is cost effective, there’s truly no substitute for a strategic partnership.

Together, Smiths Medical and Cielo created better hiring experiences for both candidates and hiring managers. Here are some of the bright results:

• 98% candidate satisfaction rating
• Increased hiring manager satisfaction by 36 percentage points in first quarter of partnership
• Increased passive candidate flow
• Reduced interview-to-hire ratio by 20%
• Decreased cost per hire to well below the industry average
• Lowered average time to fill by about 50%
• Decreased agency use to less than 10% of hires, dropping annual agency spend by more than 80% in less than two years