Part 2: Global Staffing Perspectives: Ted Meulenkamp, Pan-European Staffing Manager at Agilent Technologies - Barcelona, Spain

Posted on October 9, 2007
Filed Under Global Staffing Perspectives, Interviews |

By Dave Mendoza, Master Cybersleuth, Affiliate Partner, JobMachine Inc.

** Connect directly with Ted Meulenkamp on LinkedIn, Click “Expand Your Network” tab. Insert his name and email: ted_meulenkamp@agilent.com **

Q: Does your staffing organization “DIRECT SOURCE” from competitor companies to hire talent?

Ted: “Yes we do. We work in a niche market and the easiest to have people up to speed quickly is to hire them from the competitors. Besides that we love to hurt them by hiring their top people J There are of course legal constraints that we need to work with.”

Q: Can you identify specific “How-To” obstacles of the countries you are responsible for, - particularly in terms of HOW EMPLOYMENT LAWS ARE FACTORS - specific to direct sourcing & hiring, and cultural differences in the recruiting process.

Ted: “There are of course several countries in Europe where that is legally not possible (especially Germany) or perhaps viewed as unethical to source candidates directly from your competitors but with tools like LinkedIn, Xing and Viadeo you can easily reach out to people on an informal basis. I have not yet had people complain about this. The approach we normally take it to try and connect with them but not mentioning that you have a specific job opening you want to talk about. If they respond you can carefully take the next step. A work around is to use an agency that can call directly to names that you have sourced

Another factor is the different workers councils that we have especially in Germany. So go imagine that you’ve got a hot candidate and everybody wants to bring him on board ASAP and you need to tell them that they can make the verbal offer (if the job has been posted internally for 15 days) but need to wait with the formal offer letter because I first need to submit for approval for the workers council and oh yeah they will meet next week Thursday so the offer can go out on Friday!”

Q: How are US and European recruitment culture different? How are they similar?”

Ted: “The difference is driven by the company and perhaps less by the country culture. In general terms I think that the US recruitment culture is more direct in terms of approaching candidates and working with contract recruiters. In Europe we perhaps work more with agencies.”

Q: What recruitment software tools do you use in your day to day recruitment activities & do they translate effectively within all of the different countries where you recruit?

Ted: “We have Virtual Edge as ATS allows us to post on our external jobsite and enables us to directly post on a number of sites like Monster and Stepstone. It’s a pretty good tool but as with many tools it’s not build by recruiters. The search function is not good and some things are not intuitive. It works well in all our countries and they have some nice add-ons for sourcing and onboarding.”

Q: How many applicants do you estimate are hired from your corporate website as compared to how many are hired through referrals?

Ted: “In Europe the % of Employee referrals is still low but rising steadily. We now are at 22% and our target is to reach 30% by the end of this year.

Corporate jobboard is 8,33%
Internet sourcing is 7,9%
External jobboards is 11,5%
Agencies 21,8%

The remaining part is actually hires through the conversion of temporary workers.”

Q: WHERE ARE THE “MOST HIRES” collected from? (In terms of Quantity #)

Ted: “Our Employee Referral Program (ERP) is what gives us the most hires.”

Q: What is the source of your “LOWEST COST OF HIRES” - (least amount of invested resources for the easiest hires, regardless of quality)

Ted: “Our Corporate jobsite.”

Q. Whether you are hiring IT engineers, accounting, - whatever talent you are seeking, - is your country’s CULTURE a factor in the RESPONSE RATE you get when sending an email requesting a CV versus calling the candidate directly at their work? Are they open/eager to sending their CV, are they more shy/cautious or even suspicious depending on the method you use to contact them?

Ted: “My experience is that in most European countries people react well to an email. Perhaps a direct call is less accepted especially during office hours. They don’t appreciate being called at their office number.”

Q: What methods/resources produce the FASTEST amount of time in producing hires (what types of talent?) (Including, but not limited to: newspaper advertisements, Company website, online search engine ads, job Fairs/Open House events, Blogs, online forums, technical websites, social networking sites, etc)

Ted: “Referrals from employees that are in the same group as you hiring from. They normally approach you the moment the job is open with some names.”

Q: What SPECIFIC TECHNOLOGY TOOLS do you use that produce FASTEST amount of time in producing hires.

Ted: “Not sure to be honest what the fastest is. It normally depends on the responsiveness of the candidate that drives the speed of the process, not the tool.”

Q: Is it acceptable, or common, in your country’s culture to offer a referral fee for a successful hire to someone who recommended the candidate? Yes or No? What is the formula, method or basis for developing a money reward for a referral?

Ted: “We have an employee referral program in place and that is starting to pick up nicely. In terms of paying referral fees to externals, the response rates were actually low in Europe as opposed to the United States. Most people are not motivated by money when referring friends. I believe it to be acceptable.”

Q: Do you use blogs specific to each country’s talent within target industries/competing companies?

Ted: “No, currently looking into using more blogs.”

Q: What are the BEST JOB BOARDS ** SPECIFIC** to each of the countries you recruit for, BOTH overall and SPECIFIC TO each industry (For Example: IT, Finance, Marketing etc)

Ted:
“Europe wide: Monster and Stepstone
Germany: Monster, Stepstone, jobware.de
Germany: electronics:
Germany life science: jobvector
Germany campus recruitment: euni.de
Germany intern recruitment: praktika.de
Life Science Europe wide: newscientist.com
Spain:infojobs
France: Keljobs
Switzerland: jobs.ch
UK: Monster, jobserve for IT jobs
Belgium: Vacature.be and jobat.be”

Q: I’ve noticed that overseas, print media remains a factor but varies by region. Can you provide a list of recommended/effective local newspapers, ALL known major associations & conferences and industry-specific website portals?

Ted: “We don’t really use any newspapers but in Germany it would be SüdDeutsche Zeiting and FAZ. In Spain either El Pais and La Vanguardia.”

Q: Which 3rd party agency/ recruitment search firms have you successfully used and would recommend to others for the types of positions (IT, accounting etc) you recruit for?

Ted: “Kienbaum in Germany of sales positions, PSD in UK for sales positions, and Boyden for executive search. Most other agencies have a varied success rate”

CONSIDER ALSO: After your Linkedin invite, go Euro in spirit and Connect with Ted on each of the following European Based Social Networks - and create accounts for yourself while you have the opportunity!

OpenBC (Germany) https://www.openbc.com/hp/Ted_Meulenkamp/

Neurona (Spain) http://ted-meulenkamp.neurona.com/

View my profile on RecruitingBlogs.com

LinkedIn | Bio | MSN | Skype

Comments