This case highlights the issues of recruitment outsourc- ing and methods used to recruit for scarce skills. Blueberry is a subsidiary of a multinational IT com- pany based in the US, Globalchip, and provides Globalchip’s European technical helpdesk. Currently, the helpdesk employs 40 staff, and recruits new employees directly. New recruits need to be fluent in a European language other than English and have techni- cal competence (computer skills, some product knowl- edge) and customer service skills. Finding individuals with this skills mix has been very difficult. Currently, the Customer Service Unit includes fluent speakers of Spanish, French, Italian, Finnish, Dutch, German and Greek. The majority are non-UK nationals. There is a very tight budget for salaries. In the US, Globalchip operates a similar help desk for Asia. When this Help Desk was established the strategy adopted, after much discussion and delib- eration, was to outsource recruitment to an agency (Succuro). The HR Director of Globalchip asked the HR partner responsible for liaising with the European Help Desk, Liz McDonald, to identify whether she could put a similar outsourced recruitment process in place. She was also asked to collaborate with her US colleague to determine the difficulties that Succoro currently face in recruiting suitable individuals. 

Liz’s enquiries have shown that Globalchip has a three-year contract with Succuro, which is due for renewal soon. A ‘service-level agreement’ was pro- duced by the company, which clearly indicated what level of performance was expected of the agency, for instance time to fill vacancies. Succoro is finding it increasingly difficult to recruit suitable people within the budget constraints. How- ever, it is an important contract which it wants to retain. The agency has been performing well and exceeding the service-level agreement in some indi- cators. Succoro uses an online application form, and then screens applicants in a telephone interview. Globalchip managers are involved in the final selec- tion decision. Liz is a member of a local network of HR practi- tioners from a number of organisations. One of the other members, Jim Gray, works for an agency that runs a similar recruitment process for a mobile phone company elsewhere in the UK. Jim shared his experi- ence of recruiting those with language and technical skills: The main difficulty is trying to attract applicants to jobs that pay a little below the average. Our agency cannot afford to use some of the more popular websites because they are expensive. We need to use other ways of targeting people who might be willing to live and work in the UK – almost to sell the experience. We try to use net- works like websites for those who want to travel and work abroad as well as advertising on our agency’s overseas websites. We target social networking sites like Facebook and Gumtree. We are having real difficulties getting speakers of, for Questions Case study 3.3 99 example, Dutch and Finnish to come to work in the UK. It takes about eight weeks to fill a vacancy, though for some of the more common languages there is sometimes a pool of applicants in our skills bank. Liz is still investigating the implications of outsourcing for Blueberry.

Questions;

a.How would outsourcing change the role of HR in the recruitment process?

b.What is a service-level agreement?

c. Which methods would you use to attract applicants to the international call centre in the UK?

d. To what extent is Jim’s experience an example of ‘viral’ recruitment? What are the potential advantages and drawbacks of such an approach?

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