RPO Case Study
Recruitment Process Outsourcing
Client | Major Customer Management Outsourcing Organisation |
Location | Belfast |
Product Area | Recruitment and Assessment |
Project Purpose | Outsourced recruitment of around 150 people for a brand new start-up customer operations centre |
Background
The client organisation is one of the UK’s leading providers of outsourced customer management solutions – predominantly to the utility and financial service sectors.
The client secured a major contract to set up and operate a customer operations centre in Belfast to provide customer service, billing and collection service to the residential and commercial customers of a substantial Northern Ireland utility organisation.
This was a ground breaking contract and involved setting up a brand-new operations centre in Belfast – the client decided to outsource the entire resourcing of the site to Sterling – this encompassed the recruitment of a leadership & management complement of 25 people and around 125 telephone customer service, collections and payment processing advisors to high quality standards and extremely tight project timescales.
Solution – key elements
• Design of a robust end-to-end recruitment process to comply with unique employment & monitoring legislation in NI and deliver resourcing requirements to exacting quality standards and deadlines in a very buoyant and sensitive market.
• Design of an integrated multi-channel candidate attraction framework incorporating a dedicated web-site, press & radio advertising, search, open days and liaison with local recruitment agencies.
• Acting as key point of contact for candidates from initial interest through to arranging interviews, making verbal offers and rejecting unsuccessful applicants and any other communication during the process.
• Strong project management to ensure that appropriate candidates were delivered into a time-critical and comprehensive training programme.
• Design and delivery of an effective competency-based assessment process, quality monitoring and assessor support.
• Assistance with hire decisions, verbal offer management and follow-up together with support for referencing and background checking.
• Maintenance of a legislation-compliant computerised monitoring system and the production of regular project progress reports.
Outcomes
• Successfully appointed individuals into all key managerial posts from Head of Operations to Team Leaders within the required timescales.
• Designed and delivered an advisor recruitment programme that attracted and secured high-quality candidates capable of meeting the required training standards.
• Successfully refined and modified the recruitment plan & processes to meet operational changes and an increasingly difficult labour market.





