Solution: Recruiter On-Demand

Bristol City Council: Recruiting a Leader at the Heart of a Mayor’s Vision

Posted on by akessler
Bristol City Council: Recruiting a Leader at the Heart of a Mayor’s Vision

Leadership Search

Bristol City Council: Recruiting a Leader at the Heart of a Mayor’s Vision

Bristol City Council engaged PeopleScout to search for a strategic leadership role to advance their housing plan.

Situation

Bristol City Council’s Housing Delivery Plan identified a need for 800 new affordable homes per year. The Housing Strategy and Enabling Manager provides the strategic leadership to develop, enable and deliver this ambitious annual program.

This role is all about affordable housing strategy across the public and private sectors. The Council engaged PeopleScout to find a professional who could build great relationships in both areas and work collaboratively with partners and local communities. A persuasive advocate of the need for more homes to meet real human needs—today and tomorrow.

Solution

We were looking for an individual with Finding an impressive professional working at the scope and scale of a large authority was the key challenge. This person had to hit the ground running in a new structure.

The hiring manager brief highlighted three essential search criteria:

  • Detailed knowledge of housing and planning legislation in local authority and housing association sectors; a qualified Chartered Town Planner (RTPI) or Chartered Surveyor (RICS) with membership in a relevant association.
  • Proven leadership track record in a local authority, housing association or housing organisation
  • Exceptional stakeholder management skills to advocate for the housing sector at a local, regional and national level

Candidates who met the first two criteria were numerous but most lacked the senior stakeholder experience. So we searched at a national level, positioning Bristol as a city where people could make a real impact on reducing inequality through housing strategy.

This message resonated, and we found good levels of gender diversity in the field. The final shortlist of four had a 50/50 male to female ratio.

Results

We found healthy numbers of potential candidates in similar roles in other councils and housing associations. Despite the relocation obstacle, a shortlist of four candidates was created, and the role was filled with one outstanding leader.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY: Bristol City Council
  • ABOUT BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL: Bristol City Council is the local authority of Bristol, England, consisting of 34 wards and 70 elected councillors.
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How RPO Supports Business Growth in Europe

Posted on by akessler

For the past few years, the recruitment and staffing industry have been under constant pressure to reevaluate their service delivery strategies. Despite the recent turbulence we’ve been experiencing due to COVID-19, recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) offers organisations the opportunity to augment their recruitment functions to support growth in other regions.

Business Growth in Europe

For the past 10 years, the offshoring market in countries like Poland has been an increasingly large component of the global business operations. Offshoring certain business functions offers savings, and enterprises have become more comfortable with managing remote teams—whether through an outsourced provider or their own offshore service centers.

In addition, global businesses are looking to other countries to access a wider, well-educated and experienced talent pool. Some jobs require highly skilled talent, and in order to fulfill all their requirements, expanding to a new region—and acquiring the best skills at a lower operating cost—will become a kay component of organisational resilience going forward.

5 Ways RPO Can Support Your European Expansion

Europe is made up of 44 countries, all with their own distinct traditions and languages. A homogenous approach won’t delivery against your European talent acquisition goals. An EMEA RPO partner can help you navigate these differences and find talent as rich as the cultures this continent has to offer. 

Here are five ways a global RPO partner can help your organisation expand in Europe.

  1. Access local recruitment expertise. With a regional presence and experience, your RPO partners can provide insights into local labour markets and what matters to talent in different areas of expertise or the region.
  2. Expand your talent pool. Whether you’re opening a new factory or looking for top software engineers, RPO can open up a whole new pool of talent for your organisation.
  3. Gain efficiency and agility. Access to flexible teams and leading recruitment technology means your RPO can help optimise your processes and reduce the burden on local hiring managers.
  4. Adapt your approach to cultural nuances. Global RPO partners have multilingual teams who can tailor your recruitment processes to account for the location and role.
  5. Ensure compliance. Each country has its own recruitment regulations and laws, and an RPO partner can help you stay compliant and mitigate risk.

Need an RPO Partner in Europe?

Looking for help with talent acquisition in Europe? Contact us to learn more about our talent acquisition solutions in EMEA.

Hiring Solutions for Healthcare Providers with Krista Sullivan de Torres

Posted on by jpatel

As organizations around the globe confront talent scarcity challenges, even the most seasoned talent leaders find themselves in uncharted territory. This profile shares insights from PeopleScout Global Leader of Solutions Design, Krista Sullivan de Torres. Krista is a seasoned professional with more than a decade of human resources and talent acquisition experience. While Krista’s professional experience spans many industries, she has a passion for and deep expertise in healthcare recruitment. Her experience includes launching RPO programs for healthcare startup organizations, managing RPO operations for managed care, population health, behavioral health, and healthcare system clients. Krista’s specialties include global talent acquisition team design, talent acquisition operations, analytics and reporting, recruiting, sourcing and retention. Krista holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the University of California, Santa Cruz. 

Krista shared her insights about hiring solutions for healthcare providers from her home office in Florida. 

Ebook

How RPO Can Solve The Top Challenges In Healthcare Talent Acquisition

Access Ebook

What are some of the hiring challenges facing the healthcare industry right now? 

Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, there were already many challenges around healthcare hiring. We all hear about the shortage of nurses, but there’s also a shortage of clinicians across the board. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, we’ve seen an increased number of patients, so these shortages have become even more acute — particularly in the areas that have been hit hardest with the disease. In addition, some challenges arise when clinicians who have COVID-19 risk factors, or live with someone who does, are now unable or unwilling to work in order to protect themselves and their families — causing a large strain in hiring for these specialized roles.  

Hiring for a healthcare role, clinical or nonclinical, is much more difficult than hiring in many of the other essential industries right now. How and why is that? 

Regardless of whether we’re hiring for a role that is clinical or nonclinical, there are a lot of additional requirements for working in healthcare than there are in most other fields. If a candidate is going to be working directly with patients, particularly those that are most vulnerable, an extremely thorough background check is necessary to protect the safety of patients. So, rather than a traditional pre-hire online form and standard background check, healthcare candidates will undergo additional criminal history checks, fingerprinting and more. These critical checks tend to slow down the hiring process and can add a layer of complexity when we’re looking at the available workforce. 

Another factor affecting hiring is that a lot of people are a little afraid to work in the healthcare industry right now. As I mentioned earlier, people may be cautious about taking a job in healthcare in order to protect themselves or high-risk family members against COVID-19. In addition to there being a challenge in the number of candidates available to start, we are faced with the challenge of selecting the right people for the job and ensuring we have a pool of candidates who are excited and available to work during this unusual time.  

Lastly, a major factor we consider in the healthcare industry — particularly in a clinical setting — is ensuring healthcare workers are extremely customer-focused. We look for people who are very focused on the patient and the patient’s family. We’re facing challenges in the spike in the number of people who are severely ill, so ensuring we have workers who are correctly educating and caring for patients is of the utmost importance.  

What sort of hiring solution for healthcare providers are available right now? 

A lot of healthcare organizations are really trying to get creative during this critical hiring time due to the healthcare talent shortage. They’re looking to potentially bring back previously retired workers, flexing up hours for part-time associates and bringing in traveling nurses or clinicians to support them where their internal teams are at capacity. Many organizations are also interested in implementing a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) solution to quickly get short-term support in locations that are particularly hard-hit.  

How do these RPO solutions work in practice? What are some of their benefits? 

That’s a great question. One of the many benefits of healthcare RPO is that we’re able to ramp up very quickly to meet client needs. For example, a client came to PeopleScout when they needed to rapidly scale up hiring to support their hospitals. We spoke with the client, came up with a solution and worked through the contracting phase all within three days. It helps that PeopleScout has a large team of clinical and nonclinical healthcare recruiters who are trained to know the industry and can identify high-quality candidates to get the pipeline filled quickly. 

When it comes to on-demand recruitment support, the beauty lies in rapid engagement and disengagement. Once immediate hiring needs are fulfilled, an RPO provider can pull recruiters back in-house and assign them to a new project. This is a great benefit for clients — they don’t need to deal with the stress of layoffs and furloughs because they’re able to engage and disengage experienced recruiters as needed.  

The most important thing right now is to keep everyone safe and healthy. What is the best kind of solution for that? 

One important way to keep people safe while still meeting critical talent needs is to use a virtual hiring solution for healthcare providers. PeopleScout has a bit of an advantage here because we were a virtually based culture even prior to the COVID-19 crisis, so many of our recruiters were already working from home. Our virtual solution allows us to conduct digital interviews — on-demand or live — so we can continue to safely service our clients without interruption. We’ve been able to effectively maintain — and in some cases exceed — productivity while also minimizing the risk for our clients, candidates and internal teams. 

Are there any final thoughts on hiring solutions healthcare providers you’d like to leave us with? 

We’re all going through a really challenging time right now and trying to support one another. We’re all in this together and PeopleScout is here to support our clients, candidates, teams and prospects in any way we can. 

Fife Council: Bringing Deeper Understanding to Fill Pivotal Role

Posted on by akessler
Fife Council: Bringing Deeper Understanding to Fill Pivotal Role

Fife Council: Bringing Deeper Understanding to Fill Pivotal Role

PeopleScout helped Fife Council source a new Head of Children, Families and Criminal Justice.

Fife Council brought the role of of the Head of Children, Families and Criminal Justice to PeopleScout a few months before the current incumbent was due to retire. The role is pivotal in shaping the future of children and families services in Fife, Scotland—an area where one in four children are living in poverty.

We were tasked with identifying individuals with a strong background in leading services within children and families social care and already on the social work register in England or Scotland, or able to register. The role covered a wide remit, including criminal justice, and had also been merged with the Chief Social Work Officer role.

Understanding and communicating the role’s interesting remit, combined with the social work and criminal justice elements, proved essential to successfully filling the role. The role could not be filled internally, and it was a challenging location to recruit for, making passive candidate engagement a much more viable option than advertising.

Solution

Research

Following preliminary research, a briefing with the Executive Director of Education and Children’s Services provided further context and insight into children and family services in Fife. A version of the Directorate Improvement Plan was also shared with us to bring the role and its challenges to life. It was agreed that the ideal candidate would be working in a similar role in a smaller Scottish local authority.

Strategy

Our search channels encompassed telephone, LinkedIn, referrals, CV databases and deep web searching. By using an intensive search for council documentation, and leveraging historical freedom of information requests, we were able to identify names of individuals who were otherwise absent from traditional sources—including other local authority websites.

We reached out to a list of candidates that matched the ideal candidate profile to showcase the role. Even with sourcing, 35% of individuals who engaged with us were not interested because of the location.

Results

From the candidates we identified, Fife Council appointed a new Head of Children, Families and Criminal Justice from a smaller Scottish local authority as per their ideal candidate profile. In the candidate’s own words, she was delighted to be offered the role and excited to be joining Fife Council. She also thanked PeopleScout for contacting her as she was not looking for a new role and would have never heard of this opportunity otherwise.

At a Glance

  • COMPANY: Fife Council
  • ABOUT FIFE COUNCIL: Fife Council is the local authority for the Fife area of Scotland and is the third largest Scottish council.
Let’s Connect

I was impressed with PeopleScout’s extent knowledge of what Fife Council was looking for and your ability from our conversations to absolutely understand what type of person we wished to recruit. The process found us candidates who would not have otherwise applied, and although there was still a small number of applicants, we were able to appoint a suitable candidate to the post. This was my first time in using this service and would consider it for future senior appointments.

Client Feedback

How the Skills of the Future Will Impact Enterprise Recruitment Teams

Posted on by epadmin

Technology is disrupting nearly every industry, at a pace that has never been seen before. As we shared in our earlier article on how to create a workforce equipped with the skills of the future, this pace of change means that employers need to take a proactive role in ensuring their workforce is prepared for this change. As in-demand skills shift towards prioritising complex problem solving, critical thinking, emotional intelligence and creativity, workforce leaders need to rethink the way they are acquiring talent.

We’ve explored the pending change of skills in the workplace and its impact on employees, but what does this mean for an in-house recruiting team? As roles are redefined and employers move from traditional job descriptions to skills-based definitions, traditional recruiting teams must learn to adapt.

In this article, we’ll examine the need to change the way jobs are defined and categorized to attract the right talent, how the shifting candidate experience drives continued focus on digital sourcing and recruiting strategies and what these changes mean to in-house recruiting teams.

Changing Skills in the Workplace and the Impact on Recruiting Teams

Jobs are being redefined, skills gaps are widening, which impacts the way recruiting teams must work to find the best candidates. How can internal recruiting teams that have traditionally been aligned to specific business units adapt to meet the needs of workforce 4.0?

  • Some companies are realigning their recruiting teams away from business units to talent segments, where they focus on recruiting for a specific skill set
  • Others are outsourcing select talent segments to RPO providers for additional support and expertise
  • Other employers are moving from job-based recruitment to skills-based recruitment

The shift towards aligning recruiters with specific skills creates a challenge for in-house recruiting teams, which may not have the bandwidth or ability to shift to this model. In-house teams are struggling to keep up with the pace when recruiting for a large variety of roles and skill sets, as the number of jobs being redefined to adapt to new skills increases. Analysis of some in-house client teams show time-to-hire is actually increasing as teams find difficulty with new skills and unique roles to fill.

The digitization of work is also having a major impact on recruiting. It’s difficult for enterprise recruiting teams to keep up with the pace of change in talent acquisition and HR technology. Recruitment teams have access to more technology, which should increase productivity and improve the quality of candidates. But in truth, it can be overwhelming. The HR technology marketplace is valued at more than $14 billion, and new technologies continue to enter the space. Tech & digital skills will become more in-demand amongst recruitment teams.

As employers continue to shift their recruiting processes to keep up with the pace of change, many are turning to outsourced providers, like RPOs, to help with talent segments they’re having trouble with. Partnering with an outsourced firm also brings access to improved talent technology. At PeopleScout, for example, our Affinix™ technology is equipped with AI, machine learning and predictive analytics tools that enable our clients to connect with the best talent faster. We are also continuously evaluating and implementing new tools and features, so our clients are on the cutting-edge of emerging technologies in the marketplace.

Changing Candidate Experience: Ways to Engage with Candidates Online

Employers need to contend with changing candidate expectations in addition to adapting their jobs for the skills of the future. Candidates today want benefits like flexible working hours and virtual work opportunities and have in-demand skills that translate across multiple job categories. And, candidates today have more options than ever. With very strong job growth and low unemployment in many of the world’s leading economies, it is becoming a more candidate-driven job market every day.

How do you find these candidates of the future? Employers need to shift their employment branding strategies to fit the digital era.

Many employers invest large amounts of time and money in their career sites and application process, however most candidates are not finding your career site organically and the application process is often still cumbersome and slow.

While it is critical for candidates to have a good experience when they hit your career site, you need to first find and reach candidates where they are. With the rise of Amazon and other personalized online retail experiences, candidates expect to be treated like a consumer throughout the recruiting process. Recruitment marketing tactics must evolve to meet these requirements, with career sites recommending jobs to candidates the way online retailers recommend products to consumers.

Developing candidate personas can help employers understand exactly who they are targeting. With the candidate in mind, you can develop targeted digital advertising campaigns, post positions on specialty job boards and develop recruitment marketing content to guide candidates through the application process.

It is also critical to closely monitor job rating sites. A poor candidate or employee experience can result in a loss of candidates due to negative reviews on sites like Glassdoor and Indeed. A positive review, on the other hand, can be more meaningful as it is coming straight from an unbiased individual, rather than a company career site.

The right talent acquisition technology tool can also help provide a superior candidate experience.

  • AI-enabled sourcing tools help recruiters find the best candidates faster.
  • A streamlined application process can allow candidates apply with just one click.
  • Personalized recruitment marketing tools like chatbots, SMS messages, email campaign and individualized landing pages provide candidates with the consumer-like experience they have come to expect online.

Why Turn to Outsourced Recruitment?

When enterprise recruiting teams are struggling to implement technology or source the right candidates for positions requiring new skills, some employers bring in a talent partner to focus on specific job functions or skillsets. Talent acquisition leaders are turning to RPO providers for their expertise in hard-to-source talent segments. They’re also looking for a partner who can bring the right technology to improve sourcing and hiring metrics. Learn more about PeopleScout’s RPO solutions.