Archives for April 2019

Recruiting manufacturing employees: leave the desk to sweeten your industry knowledge

Recruiting manufacturing employees: leave the desk to sweeten your industry knowledge

Content Team

Recruiting manufacturing employees? Leave your desk, if you haven’t yet done so, and explore the front lines of the business you serve.

To be a really great manufacturing recruiter, you need to know the ins and outs of operations, supply chain management, and so forth.

Visiting the manufacturing premises can deepen your understanding of what the business needs from candidates.

Developing a deeper technical understanding can help recruiters communicate more effectively with hiring managers and manufacturing candidates.

Understanding manufacturing processes and terminology can also help recruiters gain rapport with stakeholders, helping shape stronger relationships and drive positive outcomes.

And, over time, recruiters who walk the floor can even secure qualified referrals from existing employees.

Our recruiters touring Tate & Lyle Sugars
Our recruiters tour Tate & Lyle Sugars to deepen their understanding of the sugar manufacturer’s recruitment requirements.

Recruiting manufacturing employees on a global level

Operations director Jared Massey recently joined a team of manufacturing recruiters on a behind-the-scenes manufacturing tour at Tate & Lyle Sugars.

Founded nearly a century ago, the global food and drink giant relies heavily on great talent to steadily grow its global legacy.

Jared said: “Throughout the day, we met many lovely people. We were even lucky enough to enjoy a factory tour led by one of their successful graduates.”

He added: “Being able to see, hear, and even smell the production is extraordinary. To put it in context, I can still smell the syrup! That kind of detail adds significant value to our ability to convey the opportunity to candidates.

Jared Massey
Jared Massey, RPO operations manager

“At key stages of the candidate journey, these kinds of insights can help distinguish Tate & Lyle Sugars from other employers.

“The experience has also deepened our appreciation for how Tate & Lyle Sugars have become market leaders in the manufacturing space, which is the ultimate point of differentiation for a strong employer brand.”

Great manufacturing recruiters walk the floor

Manufacturing recruiters who ‘walk the floor’ can build extraordinary relationships with the industry.

Just ask Marc Rodgers, a bilingual recruiter for GSK Canada, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. Marc recruits for the manufacturing division in Toronto.

He said: “As soon as I joined, I began walking the production floor on a bi-weekly basis so that I could build up my relationships with the workers.

Marc Rodgers
Marc Rodgers, bilingual recruiter

“In 25 years, they had never seen an HR person on the floor. I knew I was connecting with them. They now help me with referrals, and give me a heads up when someone may be leaving, and a job is coming online.”

Building strong relationships with front-line teams continues to pay dividends for Marc. Investing in people means key roles get filled faster.

GSK logo

Marc said: “As a result of my relationships with the line crew, my division has had the highest referral rate in the company globally, and we held the record for quickest time-to-fill!”

Get more insights into manufacturing recruitment

Building or refining a great manufacturing recruitment strategy? Click through to learn more about Hudson RPO manufacturing recruitment.

Hudson RPO

Content Team

The Hudson RPO Content Team is made up of experts within the Talent Acquisition industry across the Americas, EMEA and APAC regions. They provide educational and critical business insights in the form of research reports, articles, news, videos, podcasts, and more. The team ensures high-quality content that helps all readers make talent decisions with confidence.

Related articles

Discover how Brexit will affect recruitment: exclusive insights

Discover how Brexit will affect recruitment: exclusive insights

Content Team

Wondering how Brexit will affect recruitment?

We spoke with EMEA CEO Darren Lancaster to get his views on how Brexit is influencing talent strategy.

During the conversation, Darren explored the impact of Brexit on hiring demand, recruiters, and the wider industry ecosystem.

Read on to discover how Brexit is affecting multilingual recruitment and talent sourcing — or indeed, whether any significant effects are yet to be felt by recruitment outsourcing.

Darren Lancaster
Discover how Brexit may affect recruitment, with insights from Darren Lancaster.

Discover how Brexit may affect recruitment, with insights from Darren Lancaster.

Understanding how Brexit will affect hiring demand

Hi, Darren. Thanks for sharing your insights into the Brexit effect on recruitment. Can you tell us, how has Brexit impacted Hudson RPO and our clients in recent months?

From a UK perspective the reality of what we’ve seen with Brexit isn’t actually that dramatic at the moment.

You’d expect to see companies not hiring as many people. With such big turmoil and such big change, you’d expect that it would affect UK hiring numbers. That certainly isn’t the case for us at all.

Generally speaking, our hires under management have been quite resilient. If you look at pure recruitment agencies, and look at the data point of their financial performance, you’ll see that the market is relatively flat year on year. Recruitment outsourcers are the only providers to experience double-digit growth. This mirrors sector growth.

It’s not drastic. The market’s not a bad market to be in at the moment. That would all suggest that businesses are resilient in the face of uncertainty.

Are there any exceptions to that, such as blue collar hiring?

The only caveat to that is in specialist hiring. As an example, car makers in the UK have been creating noise regarding relocating and a reduction in jobs. I don’t know whether this links to the Brexit issue, or whether it relates more to a slow demand in diesel cars plus losing market share to new providers of electric cars.

But, generally speaking, other hires within blue collar aren’t drastically down, either. This suggests that the hiring market is resilient now amidst the political drama.

Understanding how Brexit will affect recruiters

So, the evidence indicates that demand for talent remains buoyant. Beyond that, how is Brexit affecting the business supply of multilingual recruiters and sourcers from outside the UK?

We hire multilingual recruitment specialists, all of whom are native speakers, within the Centre of Excellence. Our multilingual recruiters and sourcers tend to be based at the, plus we have international recruitment specialists based on-site with clients in the UK.

Depending how Brexit progresses, we may see the supply of multilingual talent begin to dry up, but the actual effects may not be felt for a few years after Brexit.

Hudson RPO team in UK
Our team of multilingual recruitment specialists, based in the UK, come from across Europe. We monitor Brexit and its possible effects on sourcing.

Consider if you’re a recruiter based in Poland at the moment. Historically, you may have had a stronger view in favour of moving to the UK and taking up work here.

But with the uncertainty of Brexit, do you still think like that? Particularly with the view that you potentially may not be able to remain here, longer term? Do you invest in your flight, your accommodation? You’ll have to consider whether it’s all worth it.

Understanding how Brexit will affect industry

How will these uncertainties affect sourcing as an industry?

In recruitment outsourcing, there’s always been a view that over a period of time, you’d establish an offshore centre to help reduce labour costs. Certain aspects of the recruitment process can suit these centres well. This started happening circa 2005-2010.

We ourselves have a centre in the Philippines, but we don’t use it for our EMEA sourcing since we also have our sourcing centre in the UK powered by native speakers.

Our competitors have been taking the approach of running sourcing operations in Poland, South Africa, India and similar locations.

Centre of Excellence, One Lochrin Square
Our Centre of Excellence (pictured above) is where dozens of multilingual recruiters work to identify talent across EMEA and beyond, regardless of Brexit.

Here’s where the issue occurs: If you want to find people that are proficient in English, that’s relatively easy to do from a sourcing centre based in Africa or Eastern Europe. But Spanish sourcing, Italian, French, and Flemish skills as example will be harder to come by.

All of these languages are a bit of a necessity when you’re recruiting talent, and you won’t necessarily have them in those locations. That’s a key reason why we continue to invest in multilingual talent sourcing within the UK and have recently signed a long lease for our current location.

But, after Brexit, if the talent dries up, where will you find that kind of language capability? It will be quite a difficult problem to solve.

Tell us more about how you envisage the post-Brexit world. How can the sourcing industry continue to deliver?

To prepare for the possible effects of Brexit, we must continue to cross-train people from diverse backgrounds to become highly skilled sourcers and recruiters.

At some point, there will be a problem when people can’t come to the UK, and there will be people who want to migrate back home. It will come and you’ll need to consider many different areas.

Workers sitting around a table
To prepare for the possible effects of Brexit, we cross-train people from diverse backgrounds to become highly skilled sourcers and recruiters.

In the financial crisis of 2008, what you basically had was massive reduction in all hiring, couple that with a reduction in graduate hiring. Graduate schemes weren’t producing skills. It led to a skills gap that we have now in the market, particularly within financial services. To illustrate: mid-career chartered accountants, who should be in abundance, surprisingly aren’t around. There’s a distinct lack of accountants in the market today.

So to bring it back to Brexit, the lack of individuals from Europe may not affecting us today, but we may not see the full effects for a year’s time or longer.

Thank you kindly for taking the time to talk with us, Darren. We look forward to catching up again, and diving further into the fascinating question of how Brexit will affect recruitment.

Hudson RPO

Content Team

The Hudson RPO Content Team is made up of experts within the Talent Acquisition industry across the Americas, EMEA and APAC regions. They provide educational and critical business insights in the form of research reports, articles, news, videos, podcasts, and more. The team ensures high-quality content that helps all readers make talent decisions with confidence.

Related articles

Recruitment companies in China: report features Hudson RPO

Recruitment companies in China: report features Hudson RPO

Content Team

Recruitment companies in China operate in a unique environment, with concerns about trade wars often hampering growth strategies.

But as Hudson RPO continues to demonstrate, growth within the Chinese recruitment market is achievable.

Over the last year, our recruitment operations have steadily expanded from our base in Shanghai. We’ve welcomed three new Chinese clients in the first quarter alone.

Behind the scenes, there are many more signs of growth within this region.

Shanghai China
Recruitment companies in China, including Hudson RPO, continue to grow. Our recruiters are based in Shanghai (pictured above), but serve the whole of China.

For example, our recruiters in China will soon be moving to a new office. The change has been driven by headcount growth of more than 50 percent.

Recruiter Magazine recently explored how Hudson RPO is navigating the Chinese talent market. The editors published these insights as part of a report on recruitment companies in China.

Brad Brenner, General Manager for China, told Recruiter: “China hiring remains strong, employers are posting large numbers of positions across a wide variety of industries and competition for employees remains high.”

The biggest opportunities within the Chinese market tend to focus on technology recruitment and health sciences recruitment, he said.

Manufacturing recruitment and hospitality recruitment are also driving growth, he added.

Brad Brennar
Brad Brenner, General Manager for China, says Chinese demand for talent remains strong, particularly in technology.

Demand for Chinese talent continues to be shaped by two factors: international trade and domestic requirements.

Addressing reports about lagging growth in China, Brad said: “Recent articles on an economic slowdown in China have to be taken in context. China’s statistics bureau has revised GDP growth down, but that is a 6.8% growth versus a 6.9% growth.

“This compares quite favourably when viewed with, for example, Europe’s average of 1.6% growth and 4.1% in the US recently. Chinese industries are hiring; employees find it quite easy to switch jobs and ask for double-digit per cent pay increases.”

Click here to read the full report in Recruiter Magazine.

Hudson RPO

Content Team

The Hudson RPO Content Team is made up of experts within the Talent Acquisition industry across the Americas, EMEA and APAC regions. They provide educational and critical business insights in the form of research reports, articles, news, videos, podcasts, and more. The team ensures high-quality content that helps all readers make talent decisions with confidence.

Related articles

Project RPO vs. end-to-end RPO: what’s the difference?

Project RPO vs. end-to-end RPO: what’s the difference?

Content Team

Project RPO vs. end-to-end RPO: the amount of time committed to RPO tends to define whether it’s considered project, or end-to-end.

But first, you may wonder, “What is RPO?“.

RPO refers to ‘recruitment process outsourcing’. The term ‘outsourced recruitment’ is similar to RPO, but RPO refers to wider improvements in talent processes.

3 male colleagues at reflective coffee table
Project RPO can serve as a pilot for a lengthier end-to-end RPO solution.

RPO improvements can take place at any level, including by role type, by team, by business unit, or commonly at enterprise level.

As you’ll see below, RPO offers a pick-and-mix service selection for strategic HR leaders. The driving goal is to create greater efficiency in talent processes.

Let’s dig into the finer details of project RPO vs. end-to-end RPO. We’ll start with end-to-end RPO, since this is typically what HR leaders think of when they consider outsourced recruitment.

End-to-end RPO

End-to-end RPO is a complete outsourced recruitment solution, typically delivered over multiple years. Managed by a third-party partner, an end-to-end RPO solution can encompass every component of your talent strategy.

These components may include:

  • candidate attraction
  • candidate screening
  • candidate assessments
  • interview scheduling
  • on-boarding periods
  • compliance monitoring
  • exit interviews

While a business can select any combination of the offering, they also have the option to outsource all of them. That would mean incorporating all of these components into your talent strategy, and potentially others as well.

Click here for more information about end-to-end RPO.

Project RPO

Project RPO is similar to end-to-end RPO, particularly in terms of service design and capability.

The main difference, however, is that project RPO tends to be delivered as a short-term solution. Project RPO can be delivered in weeks or months.

Quite often, projects tend to target a temporary hiring requirement.

For example, you may be planning to launch a new product or service, and urgently require extra sales people. Project RPO could help you quickly achieve that goal.

Or, you may need to deliver on a very niche requirement. For example, you may be struggling to fill a key role, but the requirements are so unique that the job requisition remains open longer than it should. Project RPO could help find the required talent, and ensure that the entire process runs effectively for everyone concerned.

In a way, project RPO lets you test-drive a full-scale RPO solution. It give you a sense of what it’s like to design, implement, and deliver RPO.

Click here for more information about Project RPO.

Hudson RPO

Content Team

The Hudson RPO Content Team is made up of experts within the Talent Acquisition industry across the Americas, EMEA and APAC regions. They provide educational and critical business insights in the form of research reports, articles, news, videos, podcasts, and more. The team ensures high-quality content that helps all readers make talent decisions with confidence.

Related articles

Recruitment process outsourcing: what are managed services?

Recruitment process outsourcing: what are managed services?

Content Team

In the context of recruitment process outsourcing, “managed services” refer to the supply and management of a contract workforce. This workforce includes task-ready contractors who can provide services either independently, or through a statement of work (SOW).

The phrase “managed services” is largely interchangeable with the phrase “managed service provider”, or MSP. Both terms are often used by talent managers and HR leaders.

Two workers at laptop in lounge
Managed services refer to the supply and management of a contract workforce.

An MSP typically refers to a specialist entity who manages contract services. For example, Hudson RPO is an MSP.

Weighing the advantages of managed services

When it comes to driving business growth, you might seek the services of an MSP if you:

  • Urgently require gig workers and/or freelancers
  • Need to ensure legal compliance at different levels
  • Want to control vendor costs and mitigate contingent talent risks

Selecting the right MSP enables you to protect and strengthen your business in a multitude of ways. For example, sustainable business growth can be delivered with the turn of a talent tap. Managed services also help ensure your talent strategy aligns with local, national, and global employment laws.

When uncertainty looms, a robust contingent workforce empowers your business to pursue steady, sustainable growth. Relying (in part or in whole) on managed services means your business can scale up and down as needed. For both short-term and long-term objectives, a deeply embedded MSP solution grants access to a powerful talent pipeline.

The right MSP can also help you on-board and manage a pool of contingent talent. External support at this critical stage of delivery frees you to focus on other strategic business initiatives.

silhouette of woman and laptop
An MSP can help you find freelancers, while controlling costs and mitigating risk.

Managed services also ensure a greater degree of success from the start of a project. This helps achieve satisfaction both from the business and your contractors. On the business-side, high satisfaction rates can help ensure continued budget allocation. On the supply-side, keeping contractors engaged is also key, particularly as they evaluate your requirements and opportunities alongside others in the market.

Click here for more information about managed services.

Hudson RPO

Content Team

The Hudson RPO Content Team is made up of experts within the Talent Acquisition industry across the Americas, EMEA and APAC regions. They provide educational and critical business insights in the form of research reports, articles, news, videos, podcasts, and more. The team ensures high-quality content that helps all readers make talent decisions with confidence.

Related articles

Business engagement: discover how to motivate stakeholders

Business engagement: discover how to motivate stakeholders

Content Team

Business engagement is a journey, but finding out what inspires people is the key to motivating them.

It’s not always easy, of course. So, how do you engage challenging stakeholders who are reluctant to adopt change?

Find your way forward with advice from Lori Hock, Hudson RPO CEO for the Americas:

Business engagement clip filmed during a Q&A session at HRD Summit US, 2019.

Hudson RPO

Content Team

The Hudson RPO Content Team is made up of experts within the Talent Acquisition industry across the Americas, EMEA and APAC regions. They provide educational and critical business insights in the form of research reports, articles, news, videos, podcasts, and more. The team ensures high-quality content that helps all readers make talent decisions with confidence.

Related articles

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