Dealing with international growth
Carolien Polman is the Recruitment & Resource Advisor at equensWorldline: one of Europe’s major payment and transactional services companies responsible for processing giro and card-related transactions. Since 2013, equensWorldline has worked with Staffing MS on the external hiring of – primarily IT – professionals in the Netherlands. The approach is gaining traction in Italy, Germany and possibly other European countries where the payment processor operates. What is behind the success of the collaboration and where do the challenges lie?
The financial environment in which equensWorldline operates is complex; technological development is occurring rapidly. This places relentless quality demands on contingent hiring, which mainly concerns IT professionals in the financial sector. In the Netherlands, external hiring has proven successful in recent years, partly thanks to the partnership with Staffing MS. Outsourcing this process has resulted in notable improvements to transparency, control and oversight of external hiring and administrative processes.
Complexities
“The Hiring Desk cuts through a lot of the complexities. Prior to our partnership with Staffing MS, we were mainly working in Excel and via email. We had six preferred suppliers, each with different contact persons”, explains Polman. “Managing the email traffic was a full-time job in and of itself. What we wanted was to retain the contact with the preferred suppliers, whilst also setting up a Hiring Desk with support from Staffing MS. So we started by introducing a hybrid model. We began using the Hiring Desk but gave our preferred suppliers a 24-hour lead before a vacancy was issued to the market. After just 12 months, we discovered that the open market Staffing MS used for recruitment and selection had a positive impact on both the cost and quality of hiring contingent professionals. Professionals are often difficult to find, because good, reliable and affordable candidates are in high demand and scarce in the financial sector.”
Compliance
Thanks to the Hiring Desk, equensWorldline now has more information, data and time with which to perform its management activities. Compliance – the observance of applicable laws and regulations – is crucial in the world of finance, and is hugely aided by transparency. “Now, we post a requisition on the Hiring Desk and within a defined period, get sent an overview of five candidates. That overview includes hourly rates, characteristics and other details. This creates clarity and transparency around why a person is hired, or not. Everyone has insight, and that bolsters acceptance.”
