How one company achieved new efficiencies in talent management.
By the Editors
During the last two decades, MarketStar Corporation has established its authority in strategically designed outsourced sales and marketing solutions, go-to-market systems, and business intelligence. Proficiency in recruiting skilled, professional, and dedicated staff has enabled the company to consistently produce predictable and profitable results for its clients across multiple sales channels.
To keep pace with business expansion, MarketStar quickly realized it had outgrown its current paper-based recruiting systems and tools, which failed to provide the necessary insight needed to track key staffing metrics and leverage the benefits of standardized talent management processes. Limited visibility also prevented the company from optimizing its candidate database across multiple customer engagements. Seeking to improve its recruiting processes, reduce spending with online job boards, and build its own talent community, MarketStar partnered with Technomedia-Hodes iQ to implement its talent acquisition module in order to streamline these critical recruiting initiatives.
Before implementing the Technomedia-Hodes iQ solution, MarketStar recruiters stored candidate resumes in individual email folders. This limited search and collaboration capabilities, and prohibited the company from developing a talent pipeline to quickly fill open positions. It also made it difficult to manage, and often the candidate experience was negatively affected.
“If email went down, we lost all of our resumes,” says Jodie Lee, director of recruiting at MarketStar. “Without a technology solution, we had limited search functionality and no access to metrics, prohibiting us from understanding how recruiters were performing on a weekly basis.”
Recognizing the limitations of its current process, MarketStar worked with the Technomedia-Hodes iQ team to upgrade its recruiting capabilities. The goals were to automate procedures, increase visibility into available talent, control recruiting expenses, and reduce time-to-fill.
Moving away from this manual process would also require a strong partnership around change management to help recruiters adapt to the new system and increase user adoption.
“There was a learning curve for recruiters and hiring managers moving from a paper-based to automated system,” notes Lee. “Technomedia-Hodes iQ was a valuable partner in providing training to increase user adoption and help recruiters become familiar with features and functionality available to improve efficiencies. We’re now in the process of training our hiring managers, which will increase collaboration and capabilities, further improving our recruiting process.”
Hiring managers are currently being trained as users, enabling them to have firsthand access to information such as number of resumes received per open position or the status of an open requisition—increasing visibility across the entire recruiting lifecycle.
Technomedia-Hodes iQ worked with MarketStar to tailor the system, incorporating data fields that enable the company to track specific metrics that allow them to gain deeper insight into candidates and where they are in the hiring process. Having access to this information supports the company’s reporting requirements and enables use of data to drive better decisions.
With the system in place, all stakeholders have insight into open positions, the number of resumes received for each position, as well as information on candidates that have been hired. When candidates have been onboarded, the system also enables MarketStar to track them as they move around the company, providing further observation into their mobility interests.
The Technomedia-Hodes iQ solution has transformed MarketStar’s recruiting processes into an efficient approach that enables the company to have access to key recruiting metrics for better performance and spend management. They also have visibility into recruiter performance and job status on a weekly basis, and can fine tune talent management strategies based on data. Since launch, time-to-fill has continuously improved and meets the company’s 30-day-or-less standard. With the solution in place, the average time-to-fill has been reduced by more than 20 percent in the last several years. MarketStar has reduced average time-to-fill to less than 23 days—a significant accomplishment, considering the number of positions filled has also increased during the same timeframe.
Recruiters are able to spend less time on administrative processes and more time on value-added activities such as sourcing and recruiting top talent. Other process improvements include the ability to use its own talent community to reduce spending on costly job boards.
The ability to identify where candidates are coming from as well as access its own talent community was also beneficial. Prior to working with Technomedia-Hodes iQ, the company relied on the “post and pray” method of sourcing candidates. Without a technology solution in place, candidates who were not deemed a right fit for a particular position or customer engagement were discarded from the process. Now, MarketStar is able to repurpose its talent pools and share candidates across multiple positions and clients. Not only has this helped reduce time to fill, but it has reduced reliance on job boards.
Previously, 100 percent of MarketStar’s positions were advertised on the large, expensive job boards. Today, with access to its own robust talent community, only 15 percent of positions are sourced from these channels. And, the company is able to use a layered sourcing strategy that includes its own talent community, free sites and then paid media, enabling it to optimize its recruiting investment.
Moving forward, MarketStar plans to implement an employee referral program to bring standardization and improvement to its referral process. Using the Technomedia-Hodes iQ reporting capabilities, MarketStar was able to identify that more than 30 percent of its hires come from employee referrals. Automating this process will ensure employees are recognized for individuals they refer and help the organization screen right-fit talent.
