Strategies for Exploiting Talent around Globe Explored at StepStone Customer Forum

The trials and tribulations of recruiting cabin crew in Kenya, actuaries in Almaty, civil engineers in Shanghai, and even postmen in Portsmouth were the highlights of StepStone's annual i-GRasp Customer Best Practice Forum, held on 4th September at Wembley Stadium. Over 160 delegates, representing 66 organisations, attended the event.

Placing a strong emphasis on the role of e-recruitment in enabling European-based organisations to develop their global presence, the forum included a busy schedule of customer presentations from blue chip organisations including PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Royal Mail, Virgin Atlantic and Prudential.

The keynote presentation at this year's event was given by Kim Pettigrew, Head of HR Operations for British Airways, who spoke about the challenge of balancing sensitive operational demands with the strategic opportunities of developments including plans to move BA's Heathrow operations to Terminal 5.

PwC discussed its successful recruitment of over 2,200 staff across Central and Eastern Europe, via a multilingual i-GRasp recruitment portal with vacancies posted in nine languages.

The Royal Mail outlined how it managed the impact of hiring 17,000 new workers for just two weeks period at Christmas. Meanwhile Atkins discussed its experiences of rolling out an e-recruitment platform in China.

Jeremy Langley, Customer Success Director for StepStone, commented: Our Customer Best Practice Forum provides a unique opportunity for UK recruiters to meet their peers, keep up to speed with best practices, and plan for the future. We believe this is vital: as organisations take an increasingly strategic approach to recruiting and managing talent, the pressure on HR professionals to implement innovative solutions will only increase.

With nearly 1,000 customers across Europe, we have built a strong community of customers who are enthusiastic to share their learning and experiences, he concluded.

The StepStone i-GRasp forum provided a great opportunity to share e-recruitment best practices and network with our peers, explained Alex Merrylees, Head of Resourcing for Virgin Atlantic. Not only were the presentations of a high calibre, there was also plenty of scope for informal networking and discussing feedback directly with StepStone. All in all, it was a very rewarding day.