case study

Background
Magnet, one of the UK's leading kitchen and joinery retailers, became part of the Swedish Nobia Group, Europe's leading Kitchen Company, in June 2001. Nobia have a corporate policy of outsourcing all non-core functions.

In conjunction with this outsourcing strategy, Magnet was also seeking to achieve key objectives with the outsourcing of recruitment. These included: releasing time for HR Managers within the business to focus on other aspects; achieving cost efficiencies; ensuring a professional and consistent recruitment and selection process; improving the calibre of new recruits and providing a central reporting function on all activity.

Solution
ResourceBank worked in partnership with Magnet to arrive at a solution that would meet all the requirements and developed a total outsourced recruitment operation. This operation is managed by ResourceBank, branded the Magnet Resourcing Centre and manages all recruitment both internally and externally from start to finish, including job offers and contracts and the administration of new starters, removing all the administration process from the Magnet business.

Results
The Magnet Resourcing Centre was launched in May 2003 to manage 250 vacancies a year.  The Team included four members who were solely dedicated to recruiting for Magnet, and has proved a success.  The results are a hiring rate of 80% of all recruitment within 8 weeks and feedback from the business of the increased calibre of new recruits. In addition, the amount of time that HR Managers and other managers within the Magnet business now spend on recruitment has dramatically reduced. Magnet recruiting managers only see an average of 2.2 people for every 1 person they offer a job to!

Since then the operation has grown and now includes all areas within the Magnet business recruiting approximately 400 positions per year.

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