E hiring exceptionaltalent

Changing the way the Middle East recruits
www.hiringsolutions.com

Hiring Exceptional Talent
The Business Case
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
2 Introduction

4 Change traditional mindset

6 Leverage your identity

7 Seize new opportunities

8 Enhance applicant experience

10 Switch to proactive mode

11 Measure it, manage it

12 In a nutshell

15 Return on investment

17 Quantifiable benefits

20 Unquantifiable benefit costs

28 Real life examples

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Hiring exceptional talent is a key goal for every business leader. This is expressed in different ways:
• Hiring better people than our competitors
• Hiring the best that is available in the market
• Hiring the best quality we can afford

Introduction
Traditionally, recruitment departments appointed agencies, placed newspaper and job have adapted their approach, adopted new technologies and therefore have
board adverts, and that did the job, albeit at a high price and relatively slow pace. attracted the best recruiters, who in turn are attracting the best talent.

The problem is that this no longer delivers the desired results. With many The following summarises the key aspects of the new approach and the benefits of
competitors doing the same thing, there is no differentiator for any one employer. the latest technology, to show how companies can hire better quality talent and do
Candidates have also changed their behaviour in how they look for jobs accessing it faster than before.
the wealth of information available on the internet.
The final section demonstrates how this can be achieved at a lower cost to the
To stay ahead, businesses must continually adapt to change and this is no different business – what is called a win-win.
for the recruitment function. The companies that are winning in the talent game

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Change traditional mind-set
Today, a successful recruitment department is like a marketing and sales operation Quality candidates expect more as they have a wider range of job opportunities.
rather than a traditional CV-processing unit. CEOs and HR Directors are realising For them, employers of choice are the ones that provide relevant information,
that recruitment departments are strategic business units that need to attract, communicate effectively and have swift recruitment cycles.
communicate and sell opportunities to candidates.
To be an employer of choice, you first need to leverage your identity and create a
Organisations need to take a step back and look at recruitment from the strong career brand.
perspective of a candidate. We’ve all been a candidate at some point in time and
know how we wanted to be treated.

"Today, a successful recruitment department is like a
marketing and sales operation rather than a traditional
CV-processing unit."

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Leverage your identity
Creating a strong brand name in the market should not be restricted to the This is to “sell” your company and create a desire in interested candidates to work
products or services you offer. It should be extended to your career offerings to for you. It is especially important when trying to attract expatriates who may know
leverage your identity and differentiate yourself from the competition. Organisations little about the company, or even the country.
with strong career brands are successfully attracting more of the right applicants.
To ensure an excellent candidate experience, a career portal should also provide
A career portal is the most visible way of developing your career brand. Initial self-service sections, online interview booking, private access for select candidates,
impression of a potential employer comes from a visit to its career portal and helps job agents for speculative vacancies and onboarding for newly recruited candidates,
build a direct relationship with the candidate. to name a few.

Such a portal informs visitors about job vacancies, the company’s triumphs, future With a good career portal in place, an organisation can take advantage of both
plans, career opportunities, personal growth potential, training, bonus schemes and traditional and new candidate sourcing opportunities to maximise applicant
special programmes. awareness.

"Organisations with strong career brands are
successfully attracting more of the right applicants."

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Seize new opportunities
The way job seekers search for jobs is changing rapidly. Today, the second most Once a corporate career portal is in place, detailed information about the job, and
widely known use of the World Wide Web is for job search. There are now the skills and experience required, are available online. This provides marketing
thousands of online job boards – some covering geographic areas, others specific departments with an excellent opportunity to use job adverts to focus on selling
industries – that generate good applicants. Recruiters are also taking advantage of the company brand and entice applicants to find the details online and learn about
forums and blogs to push potential candidates to their career portals. them as a potential employer. This career brand building exercise ensures top
candidates apply to you first.
With careful management, regional and global search engines can drive substantial
traffic to your career portal. Internet aside, the Intranet too is used to create These new methods in conjunction with traditional recruiting methods reach out
awareness amongst existing staff about new career opportunities. This generates to a wider audience, generating quality applicants in larger numbers. Modern
employee referrals, helps retain existing talent by allowing them to grow and solutions then quickly identify the most suitable candidates saving recruiters’ time.
reduces staff turnover.

As no one recruitment source is necessarily better than another, everything
from newspapers and recruitment agencies to job boards and blogs are
powerful hiring tools.
To capture the best talent you need to:
"With careful management, regional and global
1. Be able to use any or all of the available recruitment channels search engines can drive substantial traffic to your
2. Have tools to evaluate which are best for specific vacancy types or geographies career portal."

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Enhance applicant experience
How many times do you hear “I sent my CV and then never heard from them The entire process from capturing a good candidate’s initial interest to effectively
again” or “By the time they contacted me I already had another job”. managing him through to a conclusion is important to create the right impression.
Impersonal adverts urging CVs to be emailed to recruitment@abccompany.com
Companies spend huge sums of money to create awareness of their vacancies but may not attract good candidates.
much of it is wasted because they do not communicate with candidates. Lack of
communication or sending out the wrong message can create a negative image for Also, forcing administrative work on to applicants by getting them to cut and paste
the company, as for many businesses, applicants are also potential customers. bits of their CVs into tiny boxes online, negatively impacts a company’s chances of
hiring the best candidate. The process should be quick, simple and relevant to the
Thanks to leading edge systems, personalized communication is now easy, vacancy.
quick and if effectively done, makes the company standout. In addition, a smart
marketing department sees applicant communication as another good opportunity
to deliver the corporate message.

"By the time they contacted me, I already had another job."

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Switch to proactive mode Measure it, manage it
Leading organisations are embracing technology to manage the increase in Like it is with most business processes, to better manage your recruitment cycle,
sourcing opportunities and the benefits of a career portal. you must first be able to measure it. A good recruitment platform allows you to do
just that and helps you find answers to hundreds of questions such as:
Such technology allows multiple recruitment sources such as job boards, blogs
and recruitment agencies to be integrated into a single platform. The recruitment 1. Which marketing channel is most cost effective?
platform captures all applicant details, automatically rejects unqualified 2. Are job boards producing better results than newspapers?
candidates and helps an organisation create its own powerful, private talent 3. Which agencies deliver the best hire rate per 100 candidates?
pool. 4. Which countries produce the best applicants in a particular industry?
5. What is the average time-to-hire for sales, finance, IT, marketing, etc.?
Organisations thus become proactive by equipping itself to quickly respond to line 6. What is the average cost-to-hire by division, job type, and geography?
managers needs for new hires, swiftly fill future job opportunities, recommend 7. What is the frequency of qualified candidates applying for a job?
good finds to department heads and maximise the cost of previous job adverts. 8. What are the main reasons for refusal of job offers by qualified candidates?

"Technology allows multiple recruitment sources such
as job boards, blogs and recruitment agencies to be
integrated into a single platform."

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In a nutshell
Recruiting the right talent has not only become more difficult, it is also more • Opening up to multiple recruitment sources
complex. Recruiters today have to comprehend not just thousands of applications, • Building a continual talent pool
but also many job types, sourcing channels, vertical job websites, global
• Measuring performance, to enable process improvement
recruitment suppliers, geographic regions and multiple recruitment teams.
• Embracing today’s technology to enable all of the above.
To win the war for talent, corporate heads should lead the way by:
Today’s HR division has the power to drive business growth, provided it is empowered
• Enforcing a market driven approach to recruitment with the right set of tools to enable the approach that job seekers now demand.
• Creating a strong career brand
• Treating candidates like customers

"The system’s reduced our annual advertising budget
by 25-30%, and has made our recruiter efficiency
sky-rocket." - Gulf Air

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Return on investment

As with all business process improvement projects, a good ROI case needs to be presented. For most organisations,
the ROI from the adoption of a good recruitment system is overwhelming. It often provides quantifiable payback
within a few months.

When compiling the ROI, a common problem is the lack of hard information on the Usually the quantifiable benefits alone are enough to prove the value of the
current hiring performance and costs, which of course is partially due to the fact project. The others are a bonus. Each case only differs depending on how
that there is no system in place. For many CEOs/CFOs having the ability to measure companies recruited their staff prior to the modern system, and the size of the
performance is a key part of the justification for the adoption of a solution. organisation.

The majority of ROI cases contain two elements: The examples that follow are based on the case for a typical SME with less than
• Quantifiable Benefits 1,000 employees.

• Unquantifiable Opportunity Costs

"Today’s Human Resources division has the power to
drive business growth."

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Quantifiable benefits
AGENCY FEE
Increasingly, both candidates and organisations value a more direct hiring model Another area for cost saving is the avoidance of paying unnecessary agency
and a good recruitment platform is the way to successfully enable this. fees. Due to the difficulty of tracking thousands of candidates, companies are
occasionally paying agency fees for people that have in-fact already applied to
Direct hires through the corporate career portal and Employee Referral Programs them directly.
alone can help large organisations achieve a reduction in agency fees by at least
20% per annum in the first 2 years. Example:
Two such cases per annum
Example:
Five middle/senior positions filled directly Saving = US$30,000 per annum
Average agency fee US$ 15,000 per placement

Saving = US$ 75,000 per annum

"We have gone from using 220 recruitment agencies
to zero."- Al-Futtaim

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NEWSPAPER ADVERTISING RECRUITER EFFICIENCY
Newspapers are the most expensive form of candidate sourcing second to With a manual or semi-manual hiring process, corporate recruiters spend a
agencies, especially major international publications. significant proportion of their time on administration. This results in recruiting
additional staff to meet hiring targets.
The cost effective options available with a recruitment platform can reduce or even
eliminate this cost. Example:
With a manual process, 2 additional team members will be required.
Example: Average monthly cost US$ 3,500
Average cost per advert US$ 4,000
Reduction per annum 4 Savings = US$ 84,000 per annum


"Just four direct hires helped us save US$300,000 in
recruitment expenditure."- Banque Saudi Fransi

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ELIMINATE HIRING MISTAKES PRODUCTIVE RECRUITMENT TRIPS
The majority of hiring mistakes happen because stressed recruiters are always Due to the difficulty and time restraints for reviewing candidates in a manual
running short of time. A lengthy hiring process means that by the time an offer environment, many recruitment trips do not deliver the desired results. With a
goes out, the best candidate has already found employment elsewhere. Calculating smart solution, recruiters can ensure they only meet qualified candidates, increasing
the full cost is difficult, so the minimum cost can be used. the chances of hiring, and reducing the number of trips and the number of people
on each trip.
Assumptions:
Hiring mistakes occur 3 times a year Example:
Average cost to re-recruit each person US$6,000 Two people making two unsuccessful one week trips per year
Business lost opportunity cost per person US$6,000 Expenses per trip US$ 6,000
Cost of time per trip US$ 4,000

"We wanted a customer service approach to recruitment.
In academics, we might not recruit you for this semester
but we could recruit you for the next."- UOWD

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Potential Annual Savings
Taking into account all the stats mentioned thus, the annual
saving works out to US$261,000 and even 50% of this amount is
significant.

For a company 10 times the size, the potential saving is anywhere
between US$1.3M and US$2.6M!

This may be enough to provide a good ROI, but of course the
much of the real benefit is in the opportunity cost.

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Unquantifiable opportunity costs
SAY NO TO LOST OPPORTUNITY NO MORE MISSED OPPORTUNITIES
While the lost opportunity cost is the most significant aspect of the ROI case, it is Those undiscovered golden nuggets of talent due to lack of time to read and
often difficult to calculate a specific value. evaluate thousands of CVs. This is a criminal waste, and one that is entirely
avoidable.
The two key areas of savings come from:
1. Reduction in the time to fill vacancies and therefore additional EMPLOYEE REFERRALS SOLUTION
business productivity Employee referral programs not only offer significant savings on advertising and
2. Overall improvement in the quality of people hired and therefore agency fees, they are also shown to provide better quality candidates who are likely
additional business productivity to be retained for a longer period.

The greatest cost to any business is not having the right people in place when Few companies take advantage of their employees, but having a good solution
needed. that encourages, authenticates and tracks referrals will deliver improved quality at a
greatly reduced cost.

"99% of unsuitable applicants no longer get through to
the interview stage." - Gulf Air

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RETENTION OF TALENT career advancement opportunities, training and benefits, the reasons for their
A good hiring solution also provides the ability to promote opportunities to internal success, why you should consider them as your next career move. Then you apply
candidates. Retaining even one good member of staff means avoiding significant and get an email and an SMS within 20 minutes thanking you for taking the time.
costs to the business including: A day later you get a phone call, and so on...

• Recruitment Replacements This is especially important for businesses where every candidate is not only a
• Induction & Training potential employee, but a potential customer as well. To get a sense of current career
• Lost Opportunity & Productivity to get a replacement in place and up-to-speed brand and candidate experience, CEOs should try applying to their own companies.

IMPROVED CORPORATE IMAGE & CAREER BRAND
Picture this. As your first interaction with a potential employer, you visit their career
portal. It has all the information you need about how the company functions,

"Our average time-to-hire (job offer) has come down
from 60 days to 22 days" - Al-Futtaim

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TALENT POOL OF QUALIFIED CANDIDATES • The time-to-hire by business unit/division/company/recruiter/vacancy
After a few months of operation, a good hiring platform provides corporate • Bottlenecks in the hiring process
recruiters with a pool of qualified talent to mine for future vacancies. Clearly, any
candidate that is hired from this pool means a very significant reduction in the This information helps to identify the potential cost savings, and the best practice
time-to-hire and there are no additional sourcing costs. approach that can be applied across the enterprise. “If you can measure it, you can
manage it,” and this is a fact no business head can ignore.
REAL TIME MIS
Being able to track and report on every aspect of the hiring process provides BETTER RECRUITERS
numerous benefits such as having the ability to: HR Directors should also factor in that these days top recruiters are far more likely
• Identify suppliers that deliver best candidates and value for money to be attracted to a company that has a proper automated hiring solution.
• The cost-per-hire by business unit/division/company/vacancy There is a cost to losing good recruiters, and failing to attract good replacements.

"We have reduced our recruitment expenditure by
37.5% in the first year alone."- BSF

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Real life examples
JUMEIRAH M. A. ALSHAYA CO.

Why the project? Why the project?
The lack of a specialised recruitment system was slowing Jumeirah’s growth and With 20,000 employees and massive expansion plans in the pipeline, Alshaya had
increasing the recruitment expenditure. This pushed the hospitality leader to find to bring the cost of recruitment down, speed up the process as well as build a
a solution that not only fixed its problems but ensured the group functioned as a talent pool that could support the growth plans.
single entity when hiring.
The Results
The Results Sniperhire was implemented in 2 months and to date, Alshaya has received
In just the first 6 months, Jumeirah saved over US$ 160,000 in recruitment costs 323,000 applications from their career portal which have generated over 1,400
and got approximately 10,000 professionals registered in its database for future direct hires without agency costs.
opportunities.
They achieved a positive ROI on their system within just four months of
implementation and have now reduced recruitment costs by 75%.

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