Acquiring Talent The Right Way To Fuel Growth

All three divisions of our Client i.e. Vessel Operating, Marine Services, and Oil & Gas Services are people intensive and are dependent on a strong bench strength to be able to execute projects. The Company was growing and expanding rapidly across the GCC region and the CIS countries, and as a result there was a significant focus on talent acquisition to create an adequate talent pipeline.

The business was managing talent acquisition in the traditional way, through recruitment agencies, with hiring managers using biographical interviews as the primary method of selection. The HR team facilitated the process and took over making offers and onboarding new joiners. The feedback from the business teams pointed out that all major recruitment related performance metrics were unacceptable – costs were high, recruitment took inordinately long, the quality of hires left much to be desired, and, satisfaction scores from both candidates and hiring managers were low.

As the trusted HR Consulting partner, we worked with the HR team and initiated several actions to address the challenge. For the Marine Services and Fabrication businesses where the recruitment was the highest, an internal team of talent acquisition specialists was instituted. The team was led by an engineer with a recruitment & executive search background, to ensure the critical ability to interface with the hiring managers and candidates who were engineers or technicians, and ensure that the team were not viewed as merely paper pushers.

The entire recruitment and selection process was mapped out and a structured process put in place that focussed on critical stages – identification of talent from various source markets, screening and matching of applicants to vacancies, a competency based selection process, a controlled approach to fitment and employment offers, and finally a structured onboarding and induction process. Clear roles were defined for key stakeholders and all involved underwent training.

The business witnessed a significant turnaround in all recruitment related performance metrics - Recruitment costs reduced significantly, as did the time to closure. The quality of hires improved substantially along with the satisfaction levels as measured with the hiring managers and candidates. Additionally, an increased level of ‘internal recruitment’ was recorded, thus contributing to retention and employee engagement while reducing the learning curve.

A significant focus on identification of new hires with potential to grow further strengthened the long term talent pipeline within the organization, and was instrumental in supporting the significant compounded annual growth rate that the business delivered.