The Situation

A seasoned head of Human Resources had recently joined a $700 million Manufacturing and Consumer Products company (World Kitchen). As part of his onboarding and assimilation, he quickly decided he needed to expand and upgrade the company’s HR leadership team. He was missing key leaders to drive his vision for the organization.
Knowing inTalent’s reputation and commitment to strategic vision, exceptional talent management and practical execution, he engaged the firm to serve as an interim VP of Talent Acquisition to:

• provide thought leadership, strategic direction and a roadmap for the talent acquisition function within HR
• establish processes and procedures for recruiting inside the business
• manage the recruiting activity that was underway
• provide leadership to existing in-house and external recruiters and HR
• provide guidance on the search for a head of recruiting

The Challenges

The recruiting process differed by business unit and lacked consistency with its procedures. In most cases, candidates were presented and flown to the office before any kind of screening process. There was an assessment tool used by one business unit but not others. No formal notes were taken during the interview process and, in most cases, the Hiring Manager was not prepared for the interview. There was no implementation plan for a new ATS—no system, no expectations. The client had an outdated approach to on-boarding. Due to the volume of new programs, processes and forms, the HR team had little time to review and “test drive” their effectiveness. The staff was overworked covering all HR responsibilities while simultaneously recruiting senior talent.

The inTalent Solution

This new CHRO had set ambitious objectives requiring the ability to lead talent acquisition change with “creativity and persistence.” The goal was to create and build a strategy that would create and align practices, procedures, processes and technology to “hire the best.”

inTalent served as an interim Talent Acquisition leader and provided strategic direction for the department, helped cast a vision for the team, created strategies and tactics to enable that vision, and provided on-site leadership to set daily direction of projects and staff.

The deliverable? inTalent was responsible for creating guiding principles, developing core infrastructure for the department including tools, assessing third party vendors, recruiting new staff to the team, and guiding all recruiting activities within the business. While on site, our consultant was able to identify gaps and close those gaps in many areas of the staffing life cycle as the department was being developed.

inTalent partnered the Senior VP of HR in designing and implementing significant and impactful talent acquisition process improvements including:

• Redesigned and developed new core competencies.
• Developed a complete executive search process, including agency search process, flow charts, Hiring Manager guidelines, job profile templates and “Red Carpet” process.
• Created new Hiring Manager cheat sheets and tools to prepare them to identify and interview successfully.
• Developed new processes and forms for HR leadership to screen and select talent.
• Designed a new Hiring Manager training program with facilitator guide.
• Reviewed and recommended a new hire orientation process.
• Assisted in the development of an ATS implementation plan so the internal staff would know the pitfalls and recommended approach for success.
• Reviewed current orientation program and made recommendations.

inTalent became a valuable team member in the design and recommendations for the future of the HR function.