Pinstripe’s RPO Analyst Day: Talent Forward

Gary Bragar, HRO Research Director, NelsonHall

I attended Pinstripe’s analyst day on May 15, 2013. It was combined with its Client Talent Forward Summit, with the theme “Commitment to Innovation”. Highlights of the day included:

Client Panel

Pinstripe discussed 10 recent innovations, of which a panel of four Pinstripe clients then discussed a few Pinstripe innovations that have benefitted their business, including:

• Email campaigning: A proactive approach to creating candidate pools with active and passive candidates. This enables messaging a high number of candidates with relevant information – such as familiarizing candidates with potential hiring company announcements; e.g. “Did you happen to know we were named one of the best places to work 4 years in a row” or “We were rated as the safest operating room to work in St. Louis”. Email Campaigning has resulted in a two-to-three times increase in passive candidate responses
• Video interviewing: Both live and prerecorded interviews of candidate presentations. Managers feel more informed of when to take candidates to the next step. Team interviewing is also conducted
• Employment branding and social recruiting: All about making a connection with the candidate to “get them in the door”. Includes training and education on how to properly use social media to send out positive messages.

Client Tour

We toured the Brookfield facility where ~60% of employees work. The tour included:

• Understanding how employees are recognized
• How virtual employees are connected and communicated with as though they were onsite in Brookfield
• Demos of some of the innovations, including email campaigns to build talent pipelines
• A visit to the Impression Center.

The Impression Center, which receives 250k calls per year, is staffed by customer service experts who are imperative to potential candidates’ first impression of the company. Applicants and candidates can call the center with questions throughout the job offer, and live chat is also offered. First call resolution is 96% with 97% customer satisfaction. Over 63k interviews have been scheduled by the Impression Center. Candidates may still contact the recruiter if needed; however, by using the Impression Center there has been a 97% reduction of calls to recruiters, allowing them to focus on their primary concern – recruiting.

Pinstripe Analyst Briefing

Pinstripe has grown from ~450 employees and ~73,000 hires in 2011 to ~575 employees today and nearly 100,000 hires in 2012. Most recruitment contracts at Pinstripe are end-to-end, full service RPO as opposed to projects. Several of the more recent contracts have been second- and third-generation RPO clients. Pinstripe’s partnership with Ochre House, formed in 2009 to deliver RPO in EMEA and Asia-Pacific, has been awarded several contracts to fill multi-regional hiring needs. Both companies attribute their success to sharing similar values. Honeywell is an example of a second-generation client now expanding beyond North America to Europe that Ochre House will serve. Combined with Ochre House, RPO is provided to ~85 clients in 45 countries in 23 languages.

Summary

One of the key messages taken from this summit is that Pinstripe is keenly focused on the candidate experience and a positive work environment for its employees to excel at satisfying client needs. It is therefore of no surprise that Pinstripe recruiters have an average of >9 years’ experience.

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Social Media in HRO Needs to be NICE

To work my way into the topic of social media, I am going to start outside of HRO. IBM recently launched a Social Media Boot Camp for its small- and mid-market business partners and clients.

The social media boot camp is globally available for qualified candidates, including those from emerging markets such as China, Australia, and Saudi Arabia. It is designed to develop the skills and ideas that will enable participants to sharpen their social networking capabilities and build stronger and more interactive ties with their clients. The online course includes an eight-week session with live coaching. It is produced in conjunction with Profitecture and is available for up to 75 participants each quarter. The Q2 2012 classes are already full, and enrollment has started for Q3 2012.

The IBM-led conversation on social media provides a broader view in using new media channels. According to Ed Abrams, IBM vice president of mid-market marketing and strategy, “…remember that social media is all about conversation. You don’t want to use this forum for press releases, or collateral- type materials. You need to remember that social media is very much like a face-to-face conversation. People want to engage, they want the chance to participate.”

Starfire Technologies is one of the early business partners to complete the boot camp. Mary Spurlock, Starfire’s Vice President of Marketing, says that social media is a 2-way street and that while it is important to publish, share, and deliver value when using social media, it is also important to listen, read, and follow what your customers are doing with social media.

There are very practical aspects as well. In RPO it is already critical for a service provider to be on the leading edge of leveraging the latest social media trends, functionalities, and tools. For now, let’s stay with the broader view.

The use of social media in HRO needs to be NICE.

• New: Use social channels to offer something of unique value. Don’t simply repeat the same content offered elsewhere, and keep it fresh—update, update, update! Offer something unique (or at least a unique take) in the content.
• Interactive: Offer multiple ways and levels of interaction. Providing a “comments” section is not even table stakes today. People know how to find your corporate website. If they are on Facebook, they are looking for new ways to connect with you. Be creative.
• Connective: Take advantage of the opportunity to interact with the intended audience to continue, extend, and expand the conversations and weave connections across multiple channels into a whole. Each media channel should have a specialized point, purpose, and voice.
• Engaging: Social media provides a unique opportunity to bring your brand attributes to life in ways that create enriched longer-lasting relationships. Here, “engagement” does not mean “interactive”; it means being invested in a mutually beneficial relationship.

How NICE is your use of social media?

Linda Merritt, Research Analyst, HRO, NelsonHall

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