Through the single-page profile, our aim is to allow the readers, our prospective clients, and business partners to develop a thorough understanding of FEL and its unique value proposition in the Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) space. The profile will illustrate the functionality of your services, along with insights into the strengths, vision, culture and a roadmap of the company.
Unvarnished! What makes FEL so special in Europes RPO business?
Read here an expert talk between Dirk Lonnemann, CEO of FEL GmbH and an editor of a leading HR-magazin of the US market. Read all about what makes FEL unique in the market of RPO suppliers and what is the vision that drives us every day?
What are the current challenges faced in an RPO environment?
Also, please talk about how you address those issues?
Not enough applicants | Too many applicatians | Selection process | GDPR | Costs of Recruitment | Employer Brand | Candidates attraction | Candidates satisfaction | Increasing Staff | Decreasing Staff | Peek hiring | etc.
Todays’ recruitment has seen various changes driven by technology, employer’s and employee’s habits like social networks, billions of jobboards, etc.
We have torn into pieces what a recruiter is used to do, give it individual headlines and dedicated a leader (expert) with their specialized team for each department.
Let´s symbolize it with a symphonical orchestra. A conducter leads teams of musicians, grouped in sections with their instruments (string, brass, woodwinds, percussion,…). Finally they intonate a great symphony.
It´s similar to us. A conductor aggregates and manages this orchestra (FEL RPO team) with his/her counterpart on the customer side.
What are the current innovations that are available in RPO space?
And how does FEL inject those innovations into its services?
Application Tracking Systems ATS | Chat-Bots | Artificial Intelligence AI | Crawler | Interview Tools | Social Networks | Spider | Social Spreader | OCR Technology | etc.
Nearly every week new tools pop up, an increasing amount is driven by an AI kernel. The major question for anyone should be: Which tool is useful and which tool can be wasted.
We decided to assign the tools to thematic fields analog to our department structure.
Any head of deparment is a highly sophisticated expert in their skill with their own (tool)laboratory. They focus on their specific area, they scout and test any new technology popping up and keep their eyes on the quality of service. They are continuously improving the services offered to our customers. They are dedicated to the best service possible.
The team is able to concentrate themselves on using the selected tools for the best scale factor possible. Finally our team always uses the newest and most efficient tools on the market. Outpaced tools will be replaced by better ones immediately.
We aim to systematically lower our customers effort and fulfill their needs at the best level of quality.
There are a number of enterprises out there who are vying for the top position. What are the strategies employed by FEL to thwart this competition, and what, according to you, are the unique features of FEL that have helped in staying unique and ahead of your competitors?
The main difference is that we deliver insights to our customers. We act with a maximum of transpareny in any step of our doing and report any number to our customer for continuesly improvement of their recruitment. Our own “reporting / statistic department” signs responsible for any KPIs and insights.
“Devide and Conquer”
Devinding the complex recruiting process into manageable expert deptarments and therefore delivering high quality services while being highly scalable.
Maintaining a price model that is tied to the actual effort of recruiting rather than the annual salary of the position. (It might be easier to acquire a CFO than finding a forklift driver, so why pay more to hire the CFO?)
We are using the HR-Partner network to target additional needs of our customers with partner companies that are top nodge in their specific fields.
Actually we couldn´t identify a competitor acting as effective and transparent as we do with our “leader - department – laboratory – team structure”. The KPI’s regarding “cost of hiring” and “time to hire” are unbeatable in comparison to what we've heard from our customers. It´s simply a matter of scale end efficiency we are profiting from.
An excerpt from your website says, “FEL recommends Active Sourcing when your job ad, albeit being distributed properly, doesn‘t seem to generate the desired response among candidates.”
Could you elaborate?
We meter our recruitment methods carefully with the needs of our customers. If passive methods (e.g. online marketing, targeting, …) don´t lead to sufficient candidate numbers, we enhance the recruiting efforts by e.g. active sourcing methods to reach out to candidates who are not actively searching for a new job.
Any additional task (escalation step) raises the costs of the project for our customers. Our job is to identify the most promising recruiting activities for each vacancy and balance overall hiring costs on the long run.
Since we are responsible for all our customers‘ vacancies, we are able to keep track and systematically control overall hiring costs including annual reports.
Could you highlight the key aspects of your workforce analytical services in key areas including recruitment and IRPO?
The customer service (CS) gets the information of the new role by their customers’ counterparts (CCP). Our online marketing team is responsible for wording (input has to be delivered by their CCP), layouting, SEO optimizing and publishing within the customers career website. Our teams suggest a method mix to the CS who discuss it with their CCP´s. Any teamleader is responsible for his / her part in the orchestra.
Usually the central application tracking system will be provided and managed by our staff. Alternatively the customer has their own ATS and we get access for upgrading and managing it.
Please elaborate on how your unique methodologies and techniques that help you to identify your clients’ specific business requirements?
Initially we start out with our “Recruitment-Check”. Our Recruitment-Check is unique, based on 25 years of experience in the headhunters business. It figures out in detail which are the challenges to be faced and which methodologies might be the most efficient to start with. In most cases it elaborates the so needed benchmarks for the very first time. For any recruiter this is the base for their effectiveness of their work.
To understand your services better, can you share a few case studies where clients have benefitted from your services?
What problems did they face and after the implementation of your service, what were the benefits they received?
Can you also talk about the challenges you faced while integrating your services with the clients’ needs?
The biggest challenge for us to win customers is that the the customers´s recruiters feel obsolete. They soon realize that we would cut the hiring costs and time to hire dramatically from their point of experience. We can only try to convince them to concentrate on other aspects of HR, e.g. assessment, selection or employee development.
E.g. in 2016 we got a customer from IT business. Our engagement was a game changer for their hiring process. We could reduce the costs to 30% and we could hire double the amount of staff n comparison to the company could hire by themselves in the years before.
The same experience we made at a backery with 50 selling points in 2019. We could realize a hiring of 46 new employees within 90 days .
Last example: We were engaged for seeking for IT stuff for public authority (the police). They were more than satisfied with the quality and the time of hiring for people they were desperately seeking without succeeding themselves.
A person’s traits/hobbies are said to influence the way he manages his chores. Kindly give an analogy of how your personality has driven the company/thought leadership.
Being a passionate IRONMAN athlete I believe in long term strategies for building up expertise and sticking to goals. You have to have an endurance skill, staying focused even at changing conditions (new tools) at any time and never give up.
The way I define RPO is the result of a 25 years trip to get better, challenge by challenge (customer by customer), and raise the effort of our doings (or customers satisfaction).
Where do you see FEL in the near future? Tell us in detail about the plans of your company’s expansion in terms of its services that it offers, expansion in terms of types of clients it serves, and geographical presence?
Also, please elaborate on the upcoming services and company’s roadmap.
We´d transformed from a head hunter business (one to one supplier of top level positions) to a “candidate factory”, hiring candidates for any position at any level.
We believe that our specialized departments splitted in combination with scaling will lead to an unbeatable success. The more customers we provide the higher delivery rate and lower hiring costs will occur.
We aim at getting attention by international companies seeking for an RPO partner based in Europe to build up and expand their sites abroad.
We will manage and improve our customers application tracking systems and upgrade it with all the needed services for finally reaching out to the best candidates on the market.
Is there anything more you would like to add or highlight?
Any other interesting insight you would like us to talk about in the story that we may have missed in this questionnaire?
We believe that RPO is not a time limited trend. It´s a game changer which will shake up the companies recruitment fundamentally. No company will be as effective in recruitment results as to RPO providers, who introduce and conduct specialists’ deparments for recruitment. Their results finally profit from scaling rates and deeper knowledge.
If you would like to get more information on our services, the challenges of recruitment and how you can profit in cooperation with us, please do not hesitate to contact us. We always provide you with transparent first-hand information!
