BlueGlue solves UKN Groupís recruitment headaches

BlueGlue, a pioneer of recruitment managed services into the High-Tech SME marketplace, has been instrumental in helping the UKN Group streamline its recruitment processes since it begun to work with the company in May 2006.

UKN Group is a specialist IT Services firm which has been expanding rapidly. Based in the Thames Valley Region but with four other regional offices across the country the company has increased its headcount by 30% since it appointed BlueGlue and it continues to grow.

Sue Keen, head of corporate services, was tasked with finding a solution to the problems the company was experiencing with recruitment. She describes the problems that will be familiar to other SMEís, in dealing with traditional recruitment companies: ìUKN Group was growing rapidly but the company did not have the capability to deal with so many recruitment agencies. The hassle they bring with constant phone calls, emails and postal administration makes the whole recruitment process so time consuming.î

Despite the fact that Sue Keen had managed to negotiate her recruitment agency fees down to 12.5% of first year salary the company still felt so poorly serviced that they even tried directly recruiting themselves between late 2005 and early 2006.
However, Sue found that the administration became worse than ever and it was good timing that Sue was contacted at this point by BlueGlue.

ìI realised very quickly that the offering from BlueGlue was differentî says Sue, ìThe company offered a personal touch and were very keen to come in and learn more about the UKN Group. They had clearly done a great deal of research and had a highly developed understanding of the services that we offer our clients and the job roles we had to offer.î

As well as its customer relationships Sue was also very impressed with the systems that BlueGlue implemented in order to make the recruitment process operate in a more orderly, easy to administrate fashion. Bill Ingram, founder of the company refers to this as: ìThe BlueGlue wayî.

The service offers the basic principles of an outsourced function; the responsibility for recruitment activity becomes that of BlueGlue, leaving the customer to focus on their core business. The delivery is simple: each customer is assigned a dedicated account manager who manages the service with the help of BlueGlueís web-based portal. The portal acts both as a central point of communication between BlueGlue and those involved in the hiring process and a central repository for all recruitment information. As with all other aspects of the BlueGlue service the fee structure has been designed to fit within the needs of the SME market place.

ìOnce we had made the decision to appoint BlueGlue it was a very speedy process to get up and running and they provided full training on how to use the web-based portalî says Sue. UKN Group has three staff that regularly use the portal although Sue authorises the jobs. ìItís a relatively easy system to masterî says Sue, ìand altogether we have about half a dozen managers regularly using it.î

A huge advantage as far as Sue and the UKN Group are concerned though is the reduction in time that the company now spends recruiting. Sue calculates that despite keeping up its recruitment drive the company is saving at least 40% of the time it was formerly spending on recruitment.
The first bonus that Sue noticed was a reduction in ëcold calls and sales callsí from other recruitment companies. BlueGlue gives its customers an 0870 number to pass on to cold callers and third party agencies so that it can deal with those relationships on their behalf. This alone creates a great time saving.

The interview process is also handled through the portal with CVís kept on the system so they can be accessed at any point when required. The biggest advantage though is that BlueGlue has managed to fill all of UKN Groupís vacancies since being appointed. These roles have been mainly technical such as service desk analyst, network engineer and service technicians but have also extended into other areas such as sales. The breadth of roles demonstrates BlueGlueís ability to place candidates across any function in a high-tech SME and vitally Sue Keen maintains that: ìBlueGlue not only had a good understanding of all the roles that we needed to fill but just as importantly they knew which types of personalities would fit in well with our culture, this comes from their attention to detail and the close relationships they have built up with the management team.î

With the UKN Group signing up to an annual agreement Sue doesnít hesitate when asked about the future with BlueGlue. ìOur first year with them has gone very wellî she says, ìThe whole recruitment procedure is much less of a headache and we have even gone so far as to recommend BlueGlue to some of our customers. We will be very happy to renew in 2007.î