Project example :

"Interim Recruiter at a mechanical engineering group"

Interim Recruiter at a mechanical engineering group

Due to a large number of new projects, my client – an international group in mechanical engineering and plant construction – had the company seek out 100 specialists. They quickly realised: To be able to recruit on this scale, competencies and capacities had to be intensified without delay. An external team of several experienced Interim Recruiters was established to take charge of the business of recruiting for the company for a period of six to 12 months.

Project »Interim Recruiter«

The extent of the company’s recruiting in the past years only constituted a very small volume. Up until this point, it had mainly been the HR business partners who had done the recruiting. Now 100 employees with special skills had to be found. As an Interim Recruiter in the newly formed crew, my duties at the company included:

Interim Recruiting for Engineering
Conducting interviews for skilled workers
Commissioning and outsourcing of personnel consultancies
Analysis and optimisation of recruiting processes
Consulting in employer branding

The status quo at the outset

When I started the project, a stock take was taken together with the Interim Recruiting team. The client it turned out was already successfully using the recruiting management software "Taleo". However, the existing processes were not designed for recruiting such a high volume of employees. As Interim Recruiters, we began adapting the existing processes together, concentrating on this approach rather than setting up completely new ones. The goal being, to guide applicants through the recruiting process much faster.

Course of the project

In the past, the client had for the most part recruited future employees through job postings on the open job applicant market. As experienced Interim Recruiters, we decided to maximise how the company was branding itself as an employer. This meant: Eliciting the help of an agency. As a team, we replaced some of the photos that the adverts for jobs with the company had been relying on, as well as revising the textual content. In so doing, this now put the company in a more advantageous position to present itself as an attractive employer, distinguishing it favourably from other competitors vying for staff in the job market. Uniform branding and the perception this created, would also give the company a head start in future job postings both internally and externally.

» Identity and differentiation are the hallmarks of a company’s appeal as a workplace; employer branding can go a long way in shaping this. «

Lars Schott, HR Manager

Due to the shortage of skilled workers, the client had commissioned a large number of recruitment agencies. Contingent upon the candidate market, these were commissioned based on performance, but also with an exclusive contract. In the course of the project, the team of Interim Recruiters was able to implement uniform conditions for the recruitment agencies concerned after successful renegotiation.

My responsibilities as Interim Recruiter

As part of the interim working group, the responsibility for recruiting in the field of engineering became mine. Engineering is a very competitive environment when it comes to vying for specialist professionals, which made the task as an Interim Recruiter particularly challenging. A recruiting strategy was developed together with the Head of Engineering. Depending on the particular candidate profile, we also invited global talents and then brought them to Germany. Relocation would thereby constitute an important part of Interim Personnel strategy.

Challenges

When recruiting engineering specialists, the HR Manager is hardly spoilt for choice. Applicants are few and far between, specialist professionals will think twice before changing jobs. Still, within six months I recruited a total of 15 specialist professionals and managers for the client. It was particularly important for the client to recruit the specialist professionals in question, because some posts that needed to be filled were of a critical nature. Sub-contracting these staffing needs or relying on temporary work would have been extremely difficult

A proven track record

For the Interim Recruiters to recruit 100 professionals in a short space of time, was a task only made possible by the clever adaptation of the recruiting process i.e. redesigning employer branding; instituting new conditions as well as uniform terms in the cooperation with personnel consultancies; and last but not least, coming up with a clever strategy for recruiting engineering specialist professionals that also involved tapping into availability abroad to fill critical specialist posts.