Virgin Atlantic Flies High in E-Recruitment with StepStone

StepStone, a provider of total talent management software and services, today announced that Virgin Atlantic has selected StepStoneís i-GRasp solution to support its entire recruitment, candidate management and onboarding process. The system has also recently been extended to support Virgin Cargo, Virgin Holidays and Virgin Flightstore.

In implementing i-GRasp, Virgin Atlantic is expected to save around 19% on the operational costs of recruitment by the end of the current financial year, through a combination of lower administrative overheads, reduced media spend on advertising, agency fees and other factors.

Receiving an average of 120,000 applications for approximately 2,200 vacancies annually, Virgin Atlantic has implemented StepStoneís i-GRasp solution to automate and streamline its recruitment process, which was previously paper-based and entirely manually driven. i-GRasp deals with all aspects of candidate management, from online candidate application management, integrated job board management, integrated psychometric testing and assessment centre and interview scheduling. The software provides a single database for Virgin Atlanticís entire recruitment needs - so all applicant information can be centrally stored, enabling the airline to track talent more effectively.

i-Grasp also allows Virgin Atlantic to efficiently manage recruitment for overseas remotely from its London headquarters. i-GRasp recently supported the recruitment of 48 new staff from a staggering 5,700 applicants to its Nairobi operation, with a turnaround time of just 42 days from start to finish. Whilst face-to-face assessments were carried out in Nairobi, a ìvirtual teamî in London and Johannesburg handled screening and application management processes at the same time. This collaboration ñ made possible by i-GRasp ñ ensured applications were processed as quickly as possible.



ìThe Virgin Atlantic brand is synonymous with quality, innovation and fun, and candidates have high expectations of the recruitment experience with our company as a result,î said Alex Merrylees, Head of Resourcing. ìStepStoneís i-GRasp solution has allowed us to control, standardise and improve the recruitment process across the whole organisation. Applicants can now quickly search our careers portal for vacancies and submit applications that will be quickly reviewed by our hiring team. The speed of correspondence with applicants has increased dramatically and within four days, we can schedule first interviews. These process improvements not only save the company time and money, but ultimately benefit our employer brand and help us meet candidatesí expectations.î

The flexibility to author a series of automated screening questions ensures only the most suitable CVs are presented to Virgin Atlantic hiring managers for further review. Candidate information, including CVs, test scores and interview clips can be downloaded by managers from the database. For some operational roles such as Airport Services and Cabin Crew, time to hire has been reduced significantly. For the Virgin Atlantic Human Resource (HR) team, reporting is now easier and more comprehensive than ever before and many of the administration processes associated with the recruitment process have been automated.

Job alerts, which notify prospective candidates every time a new vacancy appears, have recently been introduced ñ helping the business take a proactive approach to recruitment. In addition, it gives successful applicants access to a special online ìOffer Zoneî, linked into its e-learning intranet, which accelerates the welcome and induction process: for example Cabin Crew members can take the health and safety training as well as reviewing a variety of information about the company.

ìWhere once our recruitment process could be very resource intensive, we now have a much more intelligent, efficient system that is allowing our recruitment team to provide more strategic value to the business as less time now needs to be spent on administration or reporting,î Merrylees said.

Matthew Parker, Group Managing Director of StepStoneís Solutions business, said: ìCompetition for skills in the aviation industry is intense. Therefore, any innovation that can help companies to streamline and more effectively manage recruitment is very attractive. As a leading global airline, Virgin Atlanticís adoption of our total talent solutions will undoubtedly help it to retain its competitive edge, especially as people are such a key component of the Virgin brand.î

StepStone's e-recruitment and talent management solutions are produced in 10 languages and other aviation customers include SAS Group and British Airways.