Skip to main content

National IT Consulting Firm Accelerates Growth

Client Challenge

The leading national $1 billion provider of healthcare information systems launched an IT and Process Improvement Consulting Division to enable its clients to use their technology investments more effectively.

The new division’s growth was limited by only one thing: its ability to find, recruit, and hire the highly specialized healthcare IT talent required to lead the complex assignments its customers needed to execute. However, the company did not have the capability in-house to identify and recruit a large number of specialized IT professionals with skills in specific technologies for roles with an 80% national travel requirement.

To meet the need of hiring 100-125 specialized consultants annually, this client engaged DoubleStar to design and execute an end-to-end recruiting solution.

Our Solution

At the outset of this engagement, DoubleStar conducted a detailed needs analysis to determine current needs and likely near-term hiring needs. From that analysis, DoubleStar developed a national recruitment plan that prioritized both talent and geographic needs. We also created customized recruitment plans to account for the local talent market differences and a plan for efficiently screening and interviewing candidates to shorten hiring cycles.

DoubleStar then executed direct and indirect recruiting campaigns in Southern California, Chicago, Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia, and South Florida. The solution included centralized sourcing and direct recruiting, on-site interview teams at each location, recruitment consulting services to the client’s regional consulting directors, and strategic staffing planning services to the Division’s Vice President.

To support the direct-recruiting initiatives, DoubleStar also developed a national advertising/branding campaign, an accelerated employee referral program, and standardized interviewing templates for all positions recruited.

Business Impacts

This partnership, originally contracted for six months, was extended for over five years because it delivered continuous results, including:

  • 125 hires were executed annually, ranging from $90,000-$150,000 in compensation, at a fully loaded cost per hire under $5,000.
  • Turnover was reduced to under 10% annually due to enhanced pre-screening and more accurate selection practices.
  • The division was enabled to aggressively seek new business and prevail over the competition on the strength of its solid talent pipeline.
  • Hiring costs for this division were reduced by 50% annually, representing an annual savings of $600,000-$700,000.
  • The cost of recruitment became a fixed, predictable expense, enabling the growing division to better forecast talent acquisition investments.

Canadian Telecom & Media Leader Standardizes Recruitment Delivery

Client Challenge

A large Canadian communications and media company that employs more than 25,000 and hires over 5,000 annually was experiencing delays and disharmony at the outset of a new applicant tracking system (ATS) implementation. Unsure of its readiness to proceed, the company expressed an urgent need to review and standardize recruiting operations and practices across its disparate business units.

The company engaged DoubleStar to provide an assessment of its processes by comparing them to best practices and to provide a roadmap for improvement that was supported by the new ATS.

Our Solution

DoubleStar conducted a rapid (30-day) staffing process assessment to gain a 360-degree view of the current recruitment state, compare best practices, conduct gap analyses, and create a roadmap for improvement for simultaneous implementation of the company’s new ATS.

Our solution included:

  • Over 50 one-on-one interviews with key business leaders and HR stakeholders to determine corporate objectives and talent demand
  • Leading service delivery interviews with recruiting leaders and team members to understand the interaction between recruiters, hiring managers, and candidates
  • Reviewing existing recruitment processes/process maps, metrics, documents, tools, and templates
  • Analyzing the findings against best practices to create an overall improvement plan

Business Impacts

Our final deliverable was a complete process analysis, including Recommendations and a Transformation Plan. The client implemented all of DoubleStar’s key recommendations, which in turn enabled the successful completion of its ATS implementation on time and with high internal acceptance. Other key outcomes of this project included:

  • Standardized recruiting operations were established across all business units while retaining key local customization elements that impacted localized corporate branding.
  • Process reviews were completed prior to system customizations, saving the need for expensive redesigns.
  • Roadmap enabled an easy implementation of a Center of Excellence model.
  • Assessment provided a roadmap for pre- and post-implementation improvement projects that gave the client’s Recruitment Leadership Team project direction for 18 months.

Leading Biopharma Company Creates a Cost-Efficient R&D Recruiting Solution

Client Challenge

The HR team for one of the world’s top biopharmaceutical companies was having difficulty balancing increased demand for recruiting with their already heavy workloads. As a result, hiring managers were going to multiple agencies to service their staffing needs. As expenses grew, the client decided a more controlled and cost-effective approach was necessary.

The company selected DoubleStar to co-design and execute a pilot RPO to determine how it might work in their environment.

Our Solution

After reviewing a number of service providers, the client selected DoubleStar to conduct an RPO pilot in one of their most challenging areas: R&D. DoubleStar worked closely with the Senior Director for R&D Recruiting to plan, structure, and implement a 12-month project with a specific focus on difficult-to-fill R&D positions.

The project was implemented in three phases:

Phase I – Planning and Initial Rollout

  • DoubleStar worked in partnership with our client to understand current hiring needs and likely future demand to size the project.
  • Based on the positions assigned to DoubleStar, a project team was deployed with strong experience recruiting for biotechnology organizations.
  • DoubleStar helped fine-tune recruitment processes, such as improving utilization of an applicant-tracking system and implementing new sourcing and screening techniques to identify viable candidates more quickly and accurately.
  • DoubleStar introduced recruitment metrics that helped the organization better understand recruiting effectiveness.

Phase II – Assuming Day-to-Day Recruiting Responsibilities

  • The client moved the entire recruiting process to DoubleStar, including directly interfacing with Hiring Managers without HR involvement.
  • The client and DoubleStar assigned project leaders to manage the recruiting relationship and ensure all service-level agreements were met.
  • Fine-tuning opportunities were identified and changes made to enhance process effectiveness.

Phase III – Transition from Pilot to Steady State

  • Once demand levels became more predictable, DoubleStar adjusted the project team to a more flexible model to accommodate fluctuating needs.
  • DoubleStar assigned a permanent project team to support a long-term recruiting solution.
  • Other areas of the company were added.
  • Formal project milestones were established, and periodic reporting/metrics were implemented.

Business Impacts

Following a successful RPO pilot, the client is fully engaged in a long-term RPO relationship, and other divisions have come on board. Benefits include:

  • Cost-per-hire reduction by more than $5,000 per hire in R&D
  • Elimination of at least $250,000 in annual agency spend
  • Creation of a centralized, efficient, and coordinated recruitment effort for R&D
  • Achievement of positive client satisfaction survey results indicating the pilot was a success
  • Development of a database of R&D candidates for future use
  • Provision of a scalable recruitment solution that can expand or contract depending on the client’s business needs

Acute Care Hospital Creates Targeted Direct Recruiting Initiatives

Client Challenge

An acute care hospital was having difficulty filling RN roles, and with more requisitions opening each week, they were falling further behind. They knew they needed to change their approach to their market but didn’t quite know how to attack the problem.

Our Solution

DoubleStar partnered with the client’s TA leader to analyze the problem and generate new solutions. The hospital employed about 1,800 RNs but had very little market intelligence about the remaining 4,500 RNs who lived in their county. As a first step, DoubleStar’s Talent Intelligence team developed a database of all RNs in the hospital’s county and close-in areas outside of the county. This database enabled us to create a ZIP code–specific view of the local RN population to determine RN market size by ZIP code. We then combined that data with hospital data on their current and former RN workforce.

With this data, we could determine the hospital’s market share of RNs in each ZIP code, and more importantly, how many RNs were available to be hired in each ZIP code. The hospital was able to use this information to build targeted recruiting campaigns, such as open houses, meets and greets, and outdoor advertising in new ways, knowing that their investments were highly targeted and more likely to be reaching their intended audience.

Business Impacts

Armed with a targeted list of RNs and a ZIP code–based market-share analysis of the regional RN talent market, this hospital was able to increase RN attendance at its recruiting events by 40+%, decrease its time-to-fill for RN openings by 3 weeks, and develop a pipeline of pre-qualified RN candidates for future recruiting needs.