Large Scale Recruitment Case Study

The Challenge

Towards the end of 2009, CIPS GPA, along with three other Recruitment Companies were invited to participate in a tender for the recruitment of 35 procurement roles, ranging from Director to Buyer status. The client wanted to work in partnership with the successful recruitment company; there were many internal stakeholders involved in the process and each had their own role priorities. Some of the roles and salaries on offer were considered to be ‘less than attractive’ when trying to target both public and private sector candidates.  Our client had also been through a major transformation programme and wanted to recruit candidates that could manage some major procurement programmes.  Their intent was clear – they wanted to bring people in who could help to integrate, build and leverage the department’s procurement capability.

The Solution

In November 2009, CIPS GPA was awarded the tender and we were asked to recruit 35 procurement professionals who understood and had category management experience. At the time of going to market, we were not able to publicly advertise what we and our client were hoping to achieve.

The Result

Using a range of tools and techniques, CIPS GPA developed a strategic campaign plan, incorporating some fairly tight time targets and in December 2009 we went live with our campaign.  We attracted candidates through a range of on-line/off-line methodologies, including Search, Job Boards, Web Sites, LinkedIn, Twitter and a range of networking forums.  All targeted candidates were initially pre-screened to ensure that they met our client’s criteria and they were subsequently interviewed using our ProFit Profiler to assess their procurement capability against our agreed criteria.  A successful outcome - 40 placements made and still counting!