Trust and innovation lead to long-term RPO success for a workwear leader.

The challenge: managing high standards and complex workforce demands.

We began filling delivery roles as part of a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) partnership 10 years ago and now make 2,000 hires annually across diverse skill sets and locations. Serving as a strategic partner, we consistently adapt to the client's evolving needs while maintaining high service standards and trust

Throughout our partnership, we have provided tailored strategies to help this workwear leader overcome complex business challenges, including:

• Meeting more-than-uniforms/more-than-recruiting expectations: The client's diverse operations, from production to service and delivery, demand a workforce deeply committed to customer satisfaction, quality, and service excellence across every role. We designed a talent acquisition (TA) strategy to meet these needs at scale, ensuring alignment with the client's high standards. This approach integrated innovative recruiting methods, advanced technology, high-touch service, and a problem-solving mindset to deliver exceptional results.  
• Navigating leadership changes: When the client's head of TA departed, a period that could have squeezed vendor relationships, we leaned into our proven capabilities of robust performance, transparency and flexibility to reinforce trust in the partnership. This approach preserved stability and reassured stakeholders, ensuring the client's TA efforts and satisfaction levels continued smoothly.
• Adapting to volatile markets: The pandemic triggered a dramatic shift in uniform demand, particularly in the restaurant and hospitality sectors. We swiftly responded by sourcing additional staff to meet the client's expanding needs, including the large-scale distribution of face masks.

The solution: immersive training and data-driven answers.

We are a multi-disciplinary, consultative workforce solutions company that positions employers to be "ready for everything" in the face of shifting markets and business priorities. This approach underscores our commitment to ongoing transformation and positive strategic outcomes for this workwear company as shown through the following examples:

• Implementing day-in-the-life recruiter training: Our recruiters undergo onsite training, including shadowing a delivery driver. This hands-on, ride-along experience helps them understand the role's physical demands, customer service requirements, and location-specific challenges (e.g., weather, urban versus rural delivery). This enhances our ability to recruit suitable talent for each job and location.
• Reexamining requirements to boost talent supply. We deliver predictive data analysis through our proprietary Sevayo® data integration technology. For example, the client's long-standing "no beard" policy excluded 20% of potential applicants for open roles. We shared data revealing how such self-imposed barriers stunted talent attraction. By removing emotion from the conversation to offer a clear business recommendation, we persuaded the client to change its approach and allow beards, boosting access to a broader supply of talent.
• Analyzing TA practices to raise gender diversity: The client identified gender diversity as a challenge due to outdated internal processes and misaligned compensation, resulting in a high drop-off rate among female candidates after interviews. We tackled this by interviewing the recruiting team and female leaders to understand their positive career experiences and improve the recruitment of women in a male-dominated industry. This led to updates in the recruitment strategy and a 26% increase in female hires within a quarter – a level of diversity we consistently maintain today.
• Providing data-driven transparency: Through weekly meetings and monthly "health-check" calls, recruiters and TA leaders examine the current landscape of each branch and market, including analytics around candidate-to-hire ratios, offers accepted/rejected/ignored, attrition, and competitor pay. The team also aligns hiring needs and trends and provides an aerial view of recruiting activity across departments.

The result: optimizing talent acquisition.

• 45% reduction in time-to-fill: With nearly 85% of candidates advancing to interviews, the client entrusted us to bypass the presentation stage and proceed directly to interviews after initial phone screens, accelerating hires and improving retention. 
• 2,000 annual hires: The partnership now encompasses thousands of hires each year, where we regularly provide extra support beyond planned hires, including recent assistance with sales roles.
• 93% candidate satisfaction: Candidate satisfaction has remained high throughout our partnership, with most respondents rating their experience with us as "extremely satisfied."
• 7x increase in hiring manager response rate: Satisfaction survey response rates among the hiring manager community recently increased sevenfold due to our concerted effort to highlight how their participation improves service quality, customizes solutions, and strengthens the partnership. Most respondents selected either "strongly agree" or "agree" regarding the quality of the hiring experience.

This content was originally published by Sevenstep. Kelly® acquired Motion Recruitment Partners, including its talent acquisition brand Sevenstep, and integrated Sevenstep within its KellyOCG® business.