HR teams constantly face the challenge of attracting talent that will drive the company toward its goals. However, when HR is only able to react to issues such as high turnover, skills gaps, or long-standing vacancies, the company risks losing the potential for growth.
The companies that thrive tend to take a proactive approach towards setting themselves up for success. So, when a new opportunity arises, their team is ready to act swiftly and efficiently.
Having the right people in the right roles at the right time is the hallmark of effective resourcing.
This is part three of the BPS Labs series. Check out the rest here:
2. Attraction
3. Resourcing (you’re here)
4. Compliance
5. Strategy
Through a local networking group, BPS World connected with a SaaS company in the Construction sector in early 2020. The company provided up-to-date market intelligence on commercial developments to help businesses find opportunities across the United States.
The company was in a period of growth with 200+ employees and plans to hire another 40-50 personnel by the end of the year. It had also expanded its C-Suite as part of a strategic recruitment drive aimed at positioning the company as a leader in their space.
At first, we were assigned to hire a Customer Success Director for their team. But as our conversations went on, we found an opportunity to offer a fresh and objective perspective on how the company can meet its growth goals. That’s when we invited their leadership team to a Lab workshop.
The Lab was held in March 2021. Members of the company’s C-Suite were eager to attend, including the Founder & CEO, CFO, COO, and CPO. They were joined by BPS World’s CEO, President, Head of Creative, and Brand Lead.
Heading into the Lab, we wanted to dig deeper into the company’s story, history, and existing processes.
Over the two decades since it was established, the company has worked its way up to become one of the leaders in its industry. Now, they didn’t just want to match the competition – they wanted to beat it.
The CEO took great pride in their organic growth. He told us: “We’ve grown because we’ve done a great job, despite being the small guys right from the beginning.”
Throughout the conversations, it was clear that the leadership team was committed to their mission. Led by a charismatic CEO, they were all on board with the vision of realising the company’s potential for growth while staying true to what made it successful in the process.
The CEO continued: “We want to look more dynamic, as well as a company that looks after its people. We want to stay scrappy but look bigger.”
However, their ambitious targets revealed key challenges that stood in their way:
The company had grown organically up to that point, but the team now felt that “the well had run dry” – a phrase that was frequently said during the Lab – in reference to a feeling that the company had exhausted the talent pool within its reach.
Within the company, the team was aligned and enthusiastic about where they were headed. But looking from the outside, they needed to improve the way they articulated their founder story, vision, and mission.
And with only one person at the helm of recruitment, they did not have the in-house capability to hit their hiring targets.
Despite these challenges, the team was excited and determined to take the company to the highest level.
BPS Labs is designed to help organisations identify, articulate, and solve their biggest people challenges. Through the active and open participation of the company’s leaders, it became evident that boosting their team’s resourcing capabilities would make the greatest impact.
To achieve this, BPS World proposed a solution that would allow the company to develop a recruitment function focused on the following objectives:
We laid out a framework that introduced mature end-to-end recruitment processes. This included:
Once implemented, it would deliver the people, processes, and technology they needed to hire at scale.
One month after the Lab, the company decided to partner with BPS World to accelerate its growth plans. Between April to December 2021, our recruitment activities delivered 59 new hires across 17 states. Of those hires, 52% contributed to improved DEI metrics.
Here’s what the CEO had to say:
"The BPS partnership worked extremely well, with the team building trusted relationships at multiple levels early on in the process. The initial BPS Labs consultancy sessions gave us confidence from the outset that we would be able to identify and attract the volume and caliber of talent we needed to meet our hiring plan. And the subsequent implementation led to a hugely successful program of consistent and high-quality hiring month-on-month."
The company’s growth was just the first step towards its goal of being acknowledged as a major player in their industry. Their success was recognised by one of the biggest names in their field, ultimately resulting in an acquisition in early 2022.
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Resourcing enables teams to seize opportunities by engaging the best talent when they’re most needed. To make this happen quickly, businesses need to keep up with their due diligence behind the scenes. Next time, we’ll cover how you can avoid disrupting your plans by staying on top of Compliance.