Situation
Project pipeline analysis revealed a shortfall in supply of key roles for the Victorian construction business for the next 12 months and beyond. When forecast against actual the shortfall was around 40 FTE across. This shortfall would have a serious commercial impact on the client’s ability to deliver 9 large scale construction projects on time and budget. All of these projects were in pre-construction phase so timing was critical.
PeopleScout worked with the client to identify the critical roles.
Challenge
The client was relatively well connected in the industry with a solid understanding of the local market. Their existing staff had been recruited from competitor organisations, and they felt that they had exhausted their own networks and appointed people where they could. What was left was considered “hard to fill” and business critical roles.
Victoria is traditionally a tight labour market for construction professionals. This is exacerbated by a recent upswing in projects across the markets. Tight timelines made delivery critical.
Approach
The onsite recruitment team met with the client and reviewed the project plans, timelines and workforce analysis to identify the critical roles, volumes and required commencement dates. Through this process PeopleScout also identified relevant competitor projects to analyse where the supply would come from. An analysis was also undertaken to identify the existing workbooks and pipelines and commercial positions of competitors to understand their suitability as target companies.
Through this process 11 critical roles were identified and timelines agreed with the business for the passive approach of candidates.
The team conducted a number of proactive candidate searches including
- Boolean web based searches
- Competitor project mapping
- Industry news research
- Referrals from existing networks
Results
- 223 names were identified and reviewed with the business (most were passively approached to assess interest), 28 were met by the business (12% of candidates identified), 11 of these have been employed. (39% conversion rate)
- Average time to fill was 20 days
- Total combined salaries were over $1.7million with an average of $169,145
- Total savings delivered to the business (against agency use) $246,534
- Resourcing timelines delivered as agreed and aligned with projects
- Ongoing talent pipeline being built from the initial research and name generation, and is still delivering results
