READ THE 4 CASES AND ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:

CASE 1: South East London Strategic Health AuthoritySouth East London

Strategic Health Authority (SHA) recruited in overseasmarkets to fill vacancies in specialist skill shortage areas, for exampledoctors and nurses. Global advertising campaigns were run using Web-basedapproaches which established and communicated a value proposition forinternational candidates. Part of this was the use of protocols to ensurethat other (developing) countries were not damaged by recruitment of theirspecialist staff. The key matters to address included:

Identifying professional expertise and technical support, for example HR net works and agencies.

Balancing targeted recruitment campaigns with longer-term recruitment initiatives.

Assessing the ethical and reputational issues linked to the campaigns.

Developing an operational reputation as internationally competitive and attractive.

Three strategies flowed from this. First, active recruitment policies wereestablished to target specific skills and countries. Arrangements withservice providers were established and different media identified andtested. Second, passive recruitment policies simply tapped into the growingnumber of international employees in the domestic labour market. Finally,longer-term strategies ensured the continued attractiveness of the SHA inoverseas markets.

Case 2: BBC World Service

Here the emphasis was on the use of technology to recruitjournalists/producers to work mainly in the UK but occasionally overseas.The BBC placed a heavy reliance on its employment brand in international recruitment and identified brand values including: international,trustworthy, award winning, accessible, impartial, educational and online. These values were used to inform all recruitment materials such asbrochures and there was a particular emphasis on their use in thecommercial website which advertised vacancies. This activity was undertakenlargely by external providers as the BBC outsourced its HR delivery.

Case 3: Barclaycard International

Barclaycard used its multicultural workforce to support its ambitious internationalisation strategy. Internally, vacancies were advertised onintranets. An international HR business partner was appointed to negotiatepreferred supplier arrangements with headhunters and other institutions. An employee value proposition and employment brand was developed across countries and global versus local processes wewere evaluated and adjusted. Many recruitment processes were adopted across the whole (international) operation, while others had to be more flexible. Recruitment was undertakenin target markets ahead of entering those markets and research wasundertaken into a wide range of geographical labour markets.

Case 4: Save the Children

Save the Children operated across six geographical regions and recruitedthree types of international labour: long-term overseas development posts,emergency overseas posts and locally appointed posts. To support this, itlaunched a new employment brand and proposition and recruitment wasdevolved to local line ma nagers. There were four main activities:

Regional HR managers worked to identify internal talent at local level, employ local advertising media and build candidate networks and databases. Global protocols were developed to identify sources of applicants and ways to advertise roles. Collaborative arrangements with other agencies and charities were entered into. Recruitment relied on the overall brand image which informed all advertising.

Online recruitment was heavily relied upon and sold the benefits of workingin a particular programme, country or region.

QUESTIONS:

1. Why do you think that all four case study organisations relied so heavily on employer branding in their recruitment activity?

2. Why is e-recruitment so effective in international recruitment?

3. To what extent should consistent global recruitment processes be adopted? How might more local tailored processes be more effective?