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Tag: Recruitment Outsourcing

Energy Service Provider Rapidly Expands Technical Services Team

Written by amanda on . Posted in Customer Stories.

When your company is in rapid growth mode, it is an exciting time. However, it can also present significant challenges like quickly expanding staff to meet business needs. You need an expert, like the DoubleStar team, that can identify qualified candidates to interview, hire, and onboard, that will flex as you continue to grow.

Client Challenge

DoubleStar was engaged by a company in an emerging industry to lead recruiting. Because most of the hiring managers worked in the field and there was no talent acquisition team in place, they needed a partner who could provide soup-to-nuts recruiting services. Our team was tasked with research, qualifying, engagement, and screening initiatives. This partnership accelerated the company’s growth and ability to support their customers. 

Our Solution

DoubleStar approached this as both a recruiting and educational partnership. Each client is unique, and it is vital for clients to educate our team on their specific needs. In exchange, we educate them on the market, best practices, and how we will achieve their goals. 

The DoubleStar team began recruiting for multiple positions which included a mix of management level and individual contributors. We staffed the project with consultants that held expertise in research, recruiting, and project management. There were many factors that proved to be challenging from the start:

  • Potential candidates worked in the field. Finding, engaging, and qualifying them took more time.
  • Mutual availability between the candidates and hiring managers to conduct interviews was sparse.
  • Speed and efficiency were critical – as the client began new projects, they needed workers on sites or risked losing contracts.
  • Candidates were required to have specialized skill sets and certifications. We quickly found out there is no national standard for these certifications – requirements vary state to state.

Our experts were successfully able to navigate these hurdles and deliver results by developing an extensive candidate funnel. With the success of the initial engagement, we became a trusted partner and expanded the project to fulfill continued growth. We are proud of this relationship and that we were viewed as essential to the success of their organization. 

Business Impacts

DoubleStar’s unique service-based pricing structure historically delivers clients 40%-60% savings versus firms with traditional transaction-based pricing methods. With the current state of the economy, we understand how vital it is to efficiently maximize your budget. Whether it is a high-volume project like this recent example or a group of specialty positions you need filled, we can deliver the right candidates at an affordable cost. 

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Specialized Life Sciences Company Benefits From DoubleStar Sourcing Strategy

Written by amanda on . Posted in Customer Stories.

Talent acquisition is critical for every organization but for an early growth company, it can make or break them. To achieve business goals and continue development of their team, this life sciences company could not settle for anything less than top candidates. While it is an arduous task to hire just one position in today’s environment, hiring for multiple positions requires an expert business partner like DoubleStar.

Client Challenge

DoubleStar was contacted in early 2022 by a life sciences company developing a cutting edge, first-to-market therapy. The company did not have a formal talent acquisition function and given its small staff, most were working in labs daily. This left little time to find and assess potential hires. They needed a partner to research, source, engage, and screen prospective candidates with the end goal of delivering a qualified and interested pool of individuals to the hiring managers. Given that this company’s product is like no other currently in market, it required very specific science-based talent. Although our recruiters have extensive life sciences experience, the advanced nature of the client’s needs required them to quickly educate themselves on very technical profiles to be able to identify the right candidates.

Our Solution

Throughout the discovery process, we learned that the client had previously utilized recruitment firms that were unable to consistently meet their hiring needs. Our team of experts identified the hardships this client had faced and educated them about how DoubleStar’s approach would deliver on their needs, and how, together, their goals could be achieved. DoubleStar staffed the project with a team of researchers, recruiters, and a project leader. This team immediately faced headwinds as they began the candidate search. The positions:

  • Required very niche scientific backgrounds.
  • Entailed working on site (on the heels of the pandemic).
  • Had little exposure. Positions had previously been posted only on the company’s website where there was low awareness of the roles and the organization.
  • Had skill requirements that changed frequently to meet the demands of a young company where business needs were evolving.

To overcome these challenges, the team focused on a heavy research campaign to penetrate the limited talent pool. We knew it would take time to identify and engage the right candidates, so as we do with every project, we emphasized transparent communication with our client and provided education on delivering a quality candidate experience. As the client began to see results from our efforts, we were able to gain their trust in our methods; and they felt confident we would deliver the right talent. Through this approach, the initial positions were filled and DoubleStar was tasked with hiring for more roles.

Business Impacts

Over the course of the project, the team had many successful hires. This has been viewed as a tremendous accomplishment by both DoubleStar and the client, especially given the very specific nature of these positions. Our team’s commitment to delivering only the highest quality of candidates led to them sourcing thousands of individuals for these roles. In addition to providing the client with valuable knowledge, which they can use for future recruitment efforts, our service-based pricing method yielded significant cost savings. Our service-based cost structure continually delivers 40%-60% savings compared to firms with traditional transaction-based pricing methods. In this specific example, we were able to deliver savings of 50%.

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Large Hospital System Overcomes Covid Hiring Challenges

Written by amanda on . Posted in Customer Stories.

Health systems are consistently challenged with trying to fill open positions. The nursing shortage, which has been a problem for years, coupled with high turnover and unprecedented competition for qualified talent, has created a dire situation. And it is not just clinical professionals that are in demand. Competition for Allied Health and Support Services staff is stretching the skills of even the most experienced recruiter.

DoubleStar, known for its solid approach to Talent Acquisition solutions, was contacted by a large hospital system in early 2020, to assist with its regular nurse hiring. This assignment is in DoubleStar’s wheelhouse, however, as the pandemic hit, the hospital’s hiring needs increased and changed exponentially. Its nursing shortage became a nursing crisis, and its support people were leaving in droves. The number of ‘open reqs’ skyrocketed per recruiter, in every area of hiring. They needed people—fast—to keep the hospital running and secure while caring for patients. 

As a result, our team of six recruiters was tasked with ever-changing roles from sourcing nurses and support staff as background support for the client’s front-facing recruiters, to staffing emerging vaccine clinics as time went on. Eventually, as the pandemic eased a bit our team members slowly rolled off the project one by one.

Changing Labor Market Presents New Challenges

As the country’s labor market changed again, it presented challenges for many of DoubleStar’s healthcare clients. For this particular client, identifying, hiring, and onboarding new employees in mass quantities became something they just could not handle alone. They requested support from DoubleStar—an initial request that started with one researcher and grew to a team of over twenty individuals.

Cool heads, a high level of organization, and a few compromises
were needed to address this unprecedented challenge.

DoubleStar had a qualified team of recruiters, researchers, and coordinators with nursing and healthcare hiring experience, but not the number of people needed to address a request of this size. As a result, we asked the client for a few compromises: Could they add recruiters with experience outside of healthcare and train them? Could we build a completely virtual team, to be assembled over time, to address the hospital’s increasingly complex hiring needs?

To meet the needs of the client, we had to
become more agile, learn quickly, and adjust fluidly.

To accomplish that, we promoted one of our top Recruitment Consultants, who had worked with this client since the beginning, to a leadership role. This helped to manage the day-to-day operations of the project. Over the course of the next nine months, we hired twenty-three Talent Acquisition professionals from all over the country—with the objective of building a cohesive team to meet our client’s volume of hiring needs.

A Complete Recruiting Solution—All Under One Roof

By partnering with DoubleStar, you have the advantage of a team that shares resources, learnings, tips, and problem-solving strategies in a highly collaborative environment where the success of one person translates into the success of the team. There are no egos, no competition, no outside agendas—just a group of hard-working individuals focused on meeting the client’s needs. Furthermore, the client does not have to worry about educating multiple vendors, keeping track of multiple invoices, or figuring out who is in charge. At DoubleStar, there is one executive in charge of the project and one cohesive team working on the deliverables.

The DoubleStar Difference

Honesty & Transparency
With Frequent Communications

Versatility
to Expand & Contract

Project Delivery
Especially During Challenging Times

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Urban Healthcare System Rebuilds Its Recruiting Capability

Written by amanda on . Posted in Blog, Customer Stories.

Client Challenge

A multi-entity health system recognized it had a broken model for delivering recruiting services to the organization. Open positions were taking too long to fill, hiring managers were unhappy with service levels, and recruiting costs were out of control.

All of this impacted the quality of patient care and needed to be corrected urgently. However, no one in the organization had the expertise to rebuild the function, so the health system engaged DoubleStar to be its RPO Partner.

Our Solution

DoubleStar conducted a quick but comprehensive assessment of the current state of recruiting, including hiring requirements, sourcing strategies, selection processes, hiring practices, and overall recruiting infrastructure.

We then assigned a Project Leader and a team of experienced healthcare recruiters to redefine the entire function, build processes and workstreams, select and implement automated tools, prioritize openings, and begin recruiting work. Within 60 days, this client went from having no dedicated recruiting team to having a fully staffed, fully functioning team that was engaging hiring managers and filling positions.

Business Impacts

Over the 10 years of this RPO relationship, DoubleStar has delivered an average of 1,300 hires/year at an average time-to-fill of 21 days for non-nursing roles and 32 days for nursing roles. Cost-per-hire averaged $1,200 for non-nursing hires and $1,800 for nursing roles, delivering a 50% savings over their internal performance and ranking among the industry’s most efficient healthcare recruiting implementations. Savings totalled over $1.5 million annually, which the system could use for patient-related improvements. This engagement was so successful that it was renewed four times.

Additionally, upon conclusion of the last renewal, DoubleStar worked in close partnership with our client to transition the function in-house, enabling a smooth transition and uninterrupted services to the business.

Specialty Pharma Firm Reimagines Recruitment

Written by amanda on . Posted in Customer Stories.

Client Challenge

A publicly traded specialty pharmaceutical company engaged in the research, development, manufacture, marketing, and sale of prescription pharmaceutical products wanted to find a cost-effective Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) partner that could manage:

  • Full lifecycle sales recruitment and strategy
  • Candidate generation and identification
  • Talent database development
  • Applicant tracking
  • Metric reporting
  • On-boarding of new hires

The recruitment efforts were to focus on identifying and hiring top pharmaceutical sales talent for two associated companies. DoubleStar was selected to provide a customized RPO approach that offered a cost-effective, high-impact solution tailored to this client’s specific needs.

Our Solution

DoubleStar’s analysis of the organization’s recruiting needs suggested that combining and centralizing the divisional recruiting efforts for all sales roles nationwide would produce the most efficient and effective result. This required DoubleStar to assist in defining a single recruiting process that would address the needs of multiple sales forces and to provide an automated solution using a Web-based ATS.

In addition, DoubleStar implemented a customized, tiered RPO solution as follows:

  • Developed a comprehensive Recruitment Plan that mapped the entire project operation, roles and responsibilities, and expected budget impact
  • Developed a custom recruiting toolset for recruiters and managers to drive efficient project execution
  • Implemented a dedicated direct-sourcing effort to focus on hard-to-fill roles and geographies
  • Implemented a Comprehensive Sourcing Plan that minimized costs to acquire active and passive candidates
  • Assigned a core team of recruiters with pharmaceutical industry experience to conduct detailed interviews, document results, and consult directly to hiring managers
  • Assigned a support team to handle national scheduling and candidate care
  • Applied Coordination Design, a flex deployment model that adjusts resourcing levels based upon shifting demand targets

Business Impacts

DoubleStar’s customized RPO solution has enabled the client to maximize limited resources and respond quickly to market changes, including:

  • A cost-per-hire under $3,500 for 5 years running
  • 30-day average time-to-fill
  • A centralized, automated, scalable, solution, with increased candidate flow and shorter hiring cycles
  • Combined recruiting efforts for two separate field sales forces into one integrated solution
  • Detailed, qualified candidate database that serves as an ongoing recruiting tool
  • Reporting on talent-generation metrics, ROI, and EEO compliance

This client now has a reliable recruiting solution that can respond to hiring spikes, deliver targeted hiring initiatives in hard-to-recruit occupations/geographies, and flex to meet changing business requirements.

High-Growth Pharma Company Gains Market Momentum

Written by amanda on . Posted in Customer Stories.

Client Challenge

With a new product launch on the horizon, this upstart drug developer understood the importance of capturing U.S. market share as quickly as possible following approvals. The company not only needed to add more sales, marketing, and corporate support resources, but it also needed to improve the caliber of candidate slates and quality of hires nationwide to accomplish its growth objectives.

The client had an existing RPO relationship but realized that its per-placement fee model would significantly increase its cost, and it was not delivering the quality of candidates desired. So, with their impending product launch creating a need for high-volume, accurate hiring, the company decided to use DoubleStar as its new RPO partner.

Our Solution

DoubleStar began by conducting an operational assessment to determine the company’s current state of readiness. Following the assessment, DoubleStar recommended several process and hiring practice changes; assigned an experienced project team including Recruiters, Researchers, and Support Specialists; and designated a senior leader to act as a strategic engagement manager during the first year.

DoubleStar also recommended the company create an internal project management role to lead the effort from their side. A system of metrics and results monitoring was developed and implemented, and DoubleStar co-presented the new solution at the company’s National Managers’ Meeting to roll out the process and train the managers in the new process, improved selection techniques, and the state of the pharmaceutical sales marketplace.

Business Impacts

In partnership with our client, DoubleStar created the recruiting engine to fill over 250 positions annually—45 of them for managers and above, at a cost 50% lower than their previous partner. According to the client, DoubleStar candidates stayed longer (turnover reached historic lows) and reached 100% productivity in less time than before. Also, time to fill all open positions dropped to under 40 days, enabling the company to meet its expansion goals and exceed its revenue targets. This project was renewed for three years until the company was acquired by a larger firm, and the project came to its natural end.