Improving internal value with Aptitude

The Challenge

Prior to our partnership, Aptitude relied heavily on external recruitment agencies to hire, which was an extremely costly and time consuming method of attracting talent. Aptitude wanted to ensure they were getting the most value from their internal talent acquisition team by upskilling them in order to reduce overall spend. It was also clear that they needed to reduce the amount of time that was being spent on recruitment by their hiring managers, so they could focus on their own roles and ensure they were driving the business forward.

To ensure their internal talent acquisition team reached their full potential and were delivering value to the business, we identified that there was a real need for them to develop new skills and nurture their own development.

Our Solution

Spinks on Site were responsible for the full end-to-end design and creation of the new recruitment process; upskilling in certain key areas and ensuring all contact from external agencies was managed by the internal talent acquisition team.

Although some businesses are afraid that embedded talent partners do this to restrict access, we used this strategy to provide consistency, which enabled us to push agencies harder and allowed the internal team more time to deliver tasks which brought value to the business.

Before launching the new recruitment process, we worked with Aptitude’s Chief People Officer, Jennie Mead, to understand the main pain points their internal team were experiencing with their initial recruitment setup. During this discussion, Jennie highlighted that they were spending a lot of budget on hiring talent through their recruitment agencies—so as part of our initial targets we set a goal of reducing their agency spend on all global hires via direct sourcing by 20%.

After setting initial targets, the next stage of our solution involved ensuring all parties involved in the new recruitment setup, from hiring managers, Aptitude’s talent acquisition team and 3rd party recruitment agencies were aware of the long-term advantages of upskilling the internal team and moving management of external agencies in house—this was key for successful implementation.

We then began upskilling the internal team. To launch, we hosted an offsite workshop with the Aptitude team. The workshop focused on sourcing techniques with our very own Spinks On Site sourcing methodology. We then hosted a talent maturity workshop, in which we evaluated their talent function setup, it’s strengths and weaknesses, and their long-term goals and objectives so that we could work to effectively mature their function in 2023 whilst delivering hard to fill roles.

As part of the longer-term development of the internal talent team, we focused heavily on utilising informal desk mentorship programmes to nurture their skills, with a focus on improving their candidate sourcing via LinkedIn.

Recruiter as well as developing their overall candidate qualification skills. We also hosted an additional workshop, focusing on ‘Live Sourcing’, providing the internal team with the opportunity to put pen to paper with their newfound skills, which helped them to retain key information. Additionally, Spinks on Site successfully implemented their ATS (Applicant Tracking Software) for the UK, which led to a global adoption in which we supported with migration and training of their internal teams.

For our quality of work across the project, Aptitude rated Spinks on Site a 9/10 on overall customer satisfaction, a 4.4/5 on our impact on their recruitment and a 4.7/5 on being heard and listened. Over the course of the project, we hired several roles and reduced their overall agency spend on all global hires via direct sourcing by 20%.

Results

• Our solution improved Aptitude’s overall recruitment strategy, ensuring they successfully hit their 2022/23 talent acquisition objectives and increased their inbound hires.
• Our solution ensured they reduced overall agency spend on all global hires via direct sourcing by at least 20%.
• Their talent acquisition team now have the required skillset to source directly, which, having reported greater confidence as a result of our desk mentorship programmes led by our Senior Talent Manager, will ensure agency spend in the longer term is kept to a minimum.
• Our solution also had a positive impact on their overall candidate experience, with direct communication between candidates and internal talent teams leading to more transparent and efficient communication throughout the hiring process. This has, in turn, created a faster and more streamlined hiring process, leaving a positive impression on potential candidates.
• Aptitude’s internal talent teams now have a deeper understanding of their company culture, vision and values, which has enabled them to better communicate their employer brand to potential candidates.