Shifts in the global recruiting environment demand a new approach from recruiting leaders, according to a new report. Colin Cottell investigates

A report by global research and advisory network firm the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) entitled ‘Multimarket Recruiting in an Era of Talent-Driven Growth’ argues that in today’s increasingly global recruiting environment “most organisations” use an outdated approach when managing their resources.

In place of this approach, which argues has “no strategic intent or guiding principles”, the report makes the case that in today’s market (see why a new approach is needed in box, below) the best recruiting leaders take an objectives-based approach to their function. 

This is one characterised by managing recruitment’s resources of people, processes, structure, tools and budgets through a concentrated focus on three key multimarket recruitment objectives (see below) which together drive global recruiting effectiveness. It then suggests ways that organisations can achieve these objective.

The report concludes that this shift in approach delivers significant results. 

Organisations that manage their global resources in this way can improve quality of hire by up to 30%, time-to-fill by 28% and cost per hire by 49%, says the report. This translates into an 8% impact on the business’ ability to achieve its global growth targets.

The report identifies three multimarket objectives that together, it says, drive global recruitment effectiveness.

1. Better investment and operational decisions. This drives 41% of global recruiting effectiveness

The report says that better decision-making can be achieved by using clear and objective decision-making frameworks. Better outcomes can also be achieved by focusing investment where recruiting’s impact will be greatest — for example, in markets of greatest strategic importance. 

Raising effectiveness can also be achieved by linking decisions on whether to standardise recruitment practice across international borders or to customise them according to local market conditions to outcomes.

The report recommends that recruiters focus on standardising a small number of processes, such as workforce planning and employment branding, while tailoring customer-facing activities, such as screening.

2. Recruiting team agility

The report says this is responsible for 27% of effectiveness. 

Most recruiting organisations do not respond effectively to spikes or uncertainty in hiring demand, says the report. Only 40% of recruitment executives think the function effectively redeploys its resources across different markets.

The report posits that in an environment characterised by great volatility in hiring volumes across many geographies, flexing recruiting capacity according to levels of demand increases a recruitment department’s agility more than adjusting processes, or updating recruiting tools and systems.  

The report finds that 77% of in-house recruitment departments turn to external recruiters (contract, RPO [recruitment process outsourcing] and agency) to meet extra demand. However, in doing so they are not helping themselves, it claims. Looking at three key measures of satisfaction — quality of hire, time-to-hire and cost — it says that external recruiters score poorly.

It suggests that rotating in-house recruiters across markets and recruiting across organisational units in the same region are the most effective ways to improve agility

3. More influence over business strategy decisions

The third way of improving recruitment’s performance in this global environment is by influencing business and talent strategy. This drives 32% of effectiveness in global recruitment, says the report.

It draws on research that indicates that global chief executives want insight from talent managers, and yet recruiting leaders put far less emphasis on this aspect of the function. 

It recommends that recruiters can shape the future talent agenda in the following ways:

• anticipate shifts in talent supply and demand

• inject recruiting expertise into business leaders’ decisions

• stay ahead of the business by operating on a global scale not just in existing markets

So why is a new approach needed?

• The international companies in particular the recruitment landscape is increasingly global.

• The average recruiting department serves nine business units, hiring in 15 countries for 36 different job families, according to the Corporate Leadership Council/Goldman Sachs 2011 Global Leadership Survey.

• Nearly two-thirds of chief executives said they placed greater emphasis on global expansion than they did three years ago.

• Recruiting globally adds greater complexity to the job of recruitment departments and acts as a drag on their performance. For example, recruitment departments that serve eight or more regions score 7% worse on quality of hire compared with departments that serve in three or fewer regions.

• Based on its research, the report also found that in this environment the ‘typical levers’ for improving global recruiting effectiveness, such as increasing the recruiting budget yielded only small gains.

The survey includes nearly 100 participating organisations including domestic and global firms. Respondents included: recruiting executives 100+, recruiting directors and managers 400+, recruiting staff (full time) 1,500+, contract recruiters 100+, chief HR officers 20+, HR business partners 700+. Hiring managers 6,300+ and new hires 5,400+. Geographical bases of respondents were: 4% Middle East/Africa, 5% Australia/New Zealand, 9% Latin America, 20% Europe, 23% Asia, 39% North America