Ivory-Chapman said the company’s experience of recruiting as it rapidly expanded globally showed that sourcing global candidates needed a different approach to the UK process.
Regus used candidate data collected from the previous year to enhance its digital hiring process further. Ivory-Chapman said that from 12 months of collected data it was clear that a one-size-fits-all recruitment process did not give the desired candidate experience.
“Although it may be true that someone in Philadelphia has the same job as someone in the Philippines, how you attract, source and bring on board global candidates differs because there are very different candidate needs all over the world and the way they engage with your technology varies,” she said.
The candidate data collected by Regus showed being able to apply on mobile devices was “crucial” to the recruitment experience. Adopting this technology resulted in a dramatic rise in applications from the Asia Pacific region.
According to Ivory-Chapman, Regus has undergone a “talent revolution” in the past two years. “We went from opening one centre a week, employing one to three members of staff, to opening a centre a day in 2013. We found ourselves expanding rapidly and it wasn't practical to continue with that centralised method of recruitment.”
Regus decided to restructure its digital recruitment process including the transformation of the careers website, the introduction of psychometric assessments, and creating a global job board aggregator that helps employers target specific countries or regions.
In the first quarter Regus had business centres in only the UK and US, but by the third quarter it had centres in 70 countries and in the fourth quarter it was operating in 100 countries and 14 languages.
Ivory-Chapman said: “We had the added complexity that it all needed to be done at great speed because if we didn't decentralise and push out the responsibility of recruitment, then it would have potentially hindered our growth.”
As part of the redefined recruitment process Regus made line managers responsible for the recruitment of staff.
