If your company is of a certain size, you'll understand some of Aliaxis's problems: the HR teams faced a number of ongoing issues. The eight different Aliaxis businesses, supported by four different HR departments, all operated as independent business units. Each business had different methods and approaches to recruitment - yet they had common problems, as well as areas of best practice that were not shared.

Two particular issues stood out. First, all businesses seemed to have difficulty in recruiting and attracting candidates. This was compounded by the fact that candidates who were offered jobs often turned the roles down. Second, no process was in place to capture data about candidates.

Claire Silvester, head of HR in the UK, backed by Aliaxis's HQ in Paris, took this as an opportunity to centralise the recruitment process. ResourceBank was identified following a thorough research programme. Aliaxis had worked with ResourceBank on senior appointments in the past and was impressed with the service. Aware that ResourceBank specialises in setting up outsourced resourcing centres, Silvester spoke to two ResourceBank clients, Adams and Kimberly-Clark, to learn about their experiences.

She says: "The outsourced approach had a lot of appeal in terms of standardising processes across all businesses and attracting a higher calibre of candidates. Finding the right partner was critical to the success. We are not a massive organisation in the UK, so I didn't want to work with any of the very large outsourced recruitment specialists where we may not get such high levels of service.

"ResourceBank really impressed us with its willingness to tailor a solution to suit our needs. However, we wanted to proceed with caution. We appointed ResourceBank to run a three-month trial for us across all of our businesses."

The trial

During the trial, ResourceBank was tasked with recruiting 25 people, ranging from a finance manager and production planner, to a marketing manager and area sales manager. The roles were based across the UK.

The team advertised the vacancies in a wide range of media, predominantly online. They handled 1,516 applications, selecting 354 candidates to complete a full competency-based interview, then selected 80 candidates for interview, providing Aliaxis with a choice of the best three candidates for each role.

ResourceBank was invited to present the results to the managing directors and HR teams across all the businesses. The results were convincing. There was an increase in the number of people who attended interviews and all candidates who were offered jobs accepted.

According to Silvester: "The trial period gave our individual businesses the opportunity to buy into the new approach. It clearly demonstrated that a centralised system was more effective. Even people in the team who were previously reluctant to give up long-term relationships with existing recruitment suppliers could understand why this new approach would give us a competitive edge."

As a result of the successful trial, in April 2007, the Aliaxis Resourcing Centre (ARC) was launched. Aliaxis signed a two-year contract with ResourceBank. The ARC, staffed by five dedicated ResourceBank employees, was set up in just three months. Its brief was to recruit 120 candidates a year, primarily for profesional, clerical, and administrative roles.

The ARC's role includes everything: taking the initial brief, creating job briefs, placing recruitment ads, interviewing candidates, shortlisting candidates for the Aliaxis recruiters to interview, providing feedback to candidates, issuing rejection and offer letters, as well as checking references.

The results

Silvester says: "A centralised approach gave us the opportunity to recruit under the Aliaxis brand name for the first time as opposed to using the individual company names. Candidates are attracted to working for a larger global organisation, with a wider range of career prospects, and this helped to attract a higher calibre of candidates.

"Previously recruitment was haphazard across the organisation. We had set up excellent in-house training and development schemes - yet these were of limited value if we couldn't recruit the right people into the business. Since partnering with ResourceBank, we have thorough processes and systems in place, which enable us to be far more efficient and allow us to recruit more effectively.

"All candidates, whether they are offered roles or not, are communicated with in a professional manner and on a timely basis. This means that they have a positive experience of Aliaxis as a business, are more likely to accept the job if offered, and are keen to find out about other roles within the group if they are not successful. The ARC team also interviews our internal candidates for promotions, benchmarking them against external candidates. If internal candidates are successful, they really feel they have earned their promotion."

The ARC logs all candidate details into a bespoke database. By building an exclusive Aliaxis candidate bank, ResourceBank has created an invaluable tool for speeding up the recruitment process. For example, a candidate who applied for a sales manager role for Marley Plumbing was not right for the job but was ideally suited for a role at Greenwood Air Management.

"In the past eight to 10 weeks, we have offered four jobs to people who were known to us through the database. These appointments have been made in less than a week. As the database grows, we will continue to see even more successes," says Silvester.

"As an added bonus, we are also saving £90,000 per year. We are really driving the company forward with this new approach to recruitment."