Partnership streamlines Nokia recruitment process

Citation

Wadee, Z. (2011), "Partnership streamlines Nokia recruitment process", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 10 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2011.37210daa.006

Partnership streamlines Nokia recruitment process

Article Type: HR at work From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 10, Issue 4

Short case studies and research papers that demonstrate best practice in HR

Nokia, the world leader in mobility, driving forward the transformation and growth of the converging internet and communications industries, required a revaluation of its recruitment strategy. The recruitment function of Nokia UK lacked standardization; managers were responsible for the fulfillment of their own recruitment needs, which resulted in an at times confused and ad hoc internal recruitment process. As of 2007, Nokia had a supply chain of over 200 agencies and, with such a spread of agencies and briefs, spend on permanent recruitment was nearly £2,800,000 during 2007.

Nokia head of resourcing, Greg Allen, felt that a clear direction and control of the situation were imperative. Managers were unable to work directly with HR, but were often forced to deal with an external agency with which they had no real professional relationship. hyphen was already in place in a vendor management capacity and though this is what Nokia required from hyphen at the time, the service was not fit for purpose to achieve Nokia’s strategic (business and HR related) goals in the long term. Following an internal review driven by Greg Allen, it was obvious that the recruiting model needed to change and it was important to ensure that managers felt that an outsourced model would be able to deliver strong results for the business as a whole.

Review and rationalization

In 2007, hyphen, a recruitment solutions provider, was appointed through a tender process and charged with the task of managing all permanent and contract recruitment for Nokia’s UK offices, via an external supply chain. In addition to this, hyphen was to manage all candidates applying for positions via Nokia’s corporate web site, Nokia.com.

In order to stem and assuage mounting external costs, hyphen conducted a wide-ranging review of Nokia’s existing processes. This resulted in the implementation of a supply chain rationalization program, which reduced Nokia’s external recruitment supply chain from 200 to 20 agencies. New terms were agreed with the external suppliers, with significantly reduced fees. Nokia’s business drivers were kept at the forefront of the process and the review took into account how the Nokia vision is channeled into the organization’s talent.

During the early part of 2008, working in conjunction with Nokia, hyphen further rationalized the Nokia supply chain. It moved away from the use of a preferred supplier list (PSL) in favor of a recruitment partnership approach through a recruitment board model. This delivers support to specific business areas and is linked through a resource council, which has a holistic understanding of Nokia. This allowed Nokia’s recruitment partners closer access to the business, and reduced both time-to-hire and cost-per-hire, while improving candidate quality and overall service perception. Structured surveys showed that 80 percent of candidates and managers rated the recruitment process as “good to excellent.”

In 2009, hyphen and Nokia made a further change to the prevailing recruitment model through the implementation of a direct hiring focused talent acquisition model. Branded as TAG (Talent Acquisition Group), it consists of staff purely from hyphen who are now seamlessly embedded within Nokia’s HR function. TAG manages the end-to-end recruitment lifecycle on behalf of Nokia and adopts a blended approach to fulfillment including internal mobility, driving employee referrals, management of applicants from Nokia.com and targeted direct recruiting using the Nokia brand. Through this model hyphen has delivered significant cost savings in the region of £1.1 million over 12 months.

A more streamlined and efficient process

Across the UK, Nokia makes over 400 experienced hires per annum. As a result of working in partnership with hyphen, it has increased the proportion of direct hires, as opposed to hiring through recruitment agencies, from less than 20 percent in 2007 to 92 percent today. The model has improved the candidate experience, reduced time to hire from close to 50 days to 36 days and cut the cost per hire by 50 percent.

hyphen has delivered key senior and executive hires into a number of the Nokia UK business areas – HR, direct marketing, retail and Vertu. Moreover, the partnership delivered a digital footprint for Nokia, developing Nokia’s social media and digital attraction model in line with the organization’s global resourcing strategy. In 2010, this resulted in a global first for Nokia by mobilizing UK recruitment via a mobile app for Nokia devices. This app enables external talent with Nokia smartphones to view recently released roles in real time and link directly to the Nokia careers website and apply for roles from their mobile. This is an innovative first step in ongoing work Nokia is doing to be at the forefront of convergent digital and mobile talent attraction channels.

Rolling out globally

The partnership’s strength has been founded on an ability to fuse creativity with financial profitability. As such, TAG is now perceived as a global recruiting center of excellence within Nokia by global resourcing and HR leadership, with hyphen directly inputting into Nokia’s strategy on onboarding and engagement initiatives. hyphen’s scope of service now includes direct sourcing for Nokia Berlin and other locations within EMEA.

Over the coming year, the TAG team will build upon the success of the past year and focus on a variety of key objectives. These include the continuation of current time-to-hire and cost-per-hire metrics, while driving a world class direct resourcing model, in line with Nokia’s EMEA and global hiring strategy. Additionally, TAG plans to further support Nokia through the improvement of assessing quality of hire by advising on additional selection procedures, such as psychometric tests and the establishment of assessment centers. Moreover, TAG will act proactively for Nokia’s employer image, positioning Nokia as an attractive proposition for active and passive job seekers, through traditional and evolving digital media, while maintaining a world class candidate experience.

The TAG team currently manages the permanent recruitment process up to verbal offer and acceptance, but once a candidate has accepted a role, the process is passed onto Nokia. TAG is now seeking to extend the process to include both on-boarding and pre-employment screening, aligning its processes to the global Nokia HR strategy, and offering full support and engagement to the UK HR initiatives. TAG will continue to manage the use of ETL (external temporary labor) via an MSP (managed service provision) and seek to execute further cost benefit through effective vendor and ETL management processes.

Zain WadeeBased at hyphen.

Greg AllenBased at Nokia.

About the authors

Zain Wadee has been the Managing Director at hyphen since January 2011. He previously held the position of operations director at hyphen following his appointment in July 2007, responsible for service delivery and the strategic development of hyphen’s recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) and MSP client portfolio. Prior to joining hyphen, he held senior roles within the RPO and MSP arenas with Adecco and Elan. With over 15 years of experience in the staffing sector, Wadee has a proven track record of designing, implementing and running bespoke recruitment solutions across a range of industry sectors and geographies. Zain Wadee can be contacted at: wadee@hyphen.com

Greg Allen is the Head of Resourcing for Nokia EMEA as well as the Program Director for Nokia’s Global MBA program. He can be contacted at: greg.allen@nokia.com