The HR team based at the Shanghai headquarters of CITIC, one of the larger leading providers of consultancy services, was seeking to make the best possible use of the automated HR systems & also had a several other plans to enhance their services to managers. They were ready to work with the managers to select & hire the best of them, if they could just get a good pool of candidates. However, it was becoming very tough for CITIC to attract good number of qualified candidates to apply for its highly specialized jobs.

Even a highly qualified applicant would be left clueless after reading a multiple page job announcement for some CITIC jobs. The announcements did not enlarge the picture of the critical mission that they served. It did not highlight the most basic skills & experience that a candidate should posses however it was more of a list of over extensive job duties.

All this resulted in vacant positions in some of the CITIC’s critical sectors. In launching this new Extreme hiring makeover effort, CITIC’s administrative executive used the senior scientific position as a proxy for their larger issues. As before CITIC’s HR team would shortlist just 3 to 4 candidates in a day & that too would end up unfit for the position. Could the makeover reverse this situation for the recruiting team?

Dakotta identified the root of the problem after reviewing the previous vacancy announcements senior level positions & meetings with the hiring managers & HR team. The root of the problem laid in the fact that CITIC was not able to market its unique employment opportunities. The HR team would always describe the position in technical terms but had not considered how to convey the job in such a way as to make the candidate really interested. Dakotta took them through a series of questions to elicit what the position really entailed, why a candidate would want to work there, and what competencies and credentials were most important for the job.

Strategy Makeover:

After the manager’s interviews, the team worked CITIC to provide them with a better marketing plan & a full proof targeting strategy. They also helped them to create a new interesting language for their job announcements that would attract candidates of right skills & quality. The announcements were now very well written in simple English without any tough to understand govt. jargons, which emphasized more on why CITIC is a great place to work.

The also introduced an internet based targeted recruiting strategy, which would further enhance the CITIC’s scope of attracting highly qualified candidates. This new look to their recruiting strategy helped CITIC for the first time attract 28 qualified candidates for a single position.

Building a Future Pool of Candidates:

Dakotta assisted CITIC construct an emerging leaders program with a view of building a pool of future leaders. With an outlook of creating diversity in the organization, CITIC’s recruiters targeted fifteen universities, mostly from south & west. Following their new strategy in the, this time well made professional flash presentation was used for on-campus recruiting efforts.

CITIC also developed a core intern training program around 3 separate functions namely – Information technology, Facility oversight & Business functions. Within CITIC, each intern will be assigned a sponsor who would provide them leadership & ensure challenging work.

In the view of beating private sector organizations in their recruiting flexibility & benefits, CITIC also introduced various schemes for their candidates such as student loan repayments, signing bonuses & relocation assistance.

Assisting Managers to Work Effectively:

Over the last several months, they have worked with managers to reexamine their hiring process to reduce the time and effort required to bring someone on board while board while improving the quality of candidates delivered by the process. Managers and HR representatives agreed that engaging in a comprehensive strategic conversation at the outset would speed the process, eliminate redundancies and guarantee improved quality of outcomes.

Providing Great Recruiting Resources:

In the course of action CITIC directors realized that they needed to enhance HR resource staff. As the first steps they created a new position to lead their HR operations. Also, the HR team focused on renewing their workforce planning to identify current & future skills gap; provide them training wherever necessary & improve the use of automated HR systems & tools.

 

-> The project to fill a senior scientific position resulted in an 8 times increase in the number of applicants.

-> The recruiting staff themselves admitted, after screening around 30 interns that the candidate pool was of a very high quality. Having heard about the success of this program, leaders recruiting candidates in other functional areas have asked for a custom program of their own.

-> The HR staff themselves saw the benefit of acquiring deeper understanding of the CITIC business. Right from what type of talent they need to attract & where to look for ideal candidates to the level of attraction what a top talent would find in about working at CITIC.

-> Potential employees and current employees were much more enthusiastic after introducing various schemes like student loan repayments, recruiting bonuses & relocation payments.