How House of HR leveraged LinkedIn to become a leader in digital recruitment
SUCCESS STORY
Journey of discovery: Connecting motivated candidates with successful businesses
According to a new study by the Antwerp Management School and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, employees attach more importance to happiness at work and mental health than to productivity. The study was commissioned by House of HR, a leading HR services group and huge umbrella organisation that represents over 10 different recruitment brands. House of HR calls these brands PowerHouses and there are more than 40 Boutiques [brands] within the PowerHouses.
House of HR is a forward-thinking, innovative, and progressive organisation that is happy to do things differently to achieve extraordinary things. In fact, the group is no ordinary recruitment organisation. It embraces opportunities and in 2015, PowerHouse “Accent” created a business unit called Digital Talent Hunters because it recognised that traditional techniques would not meet future recruitment demands. It understood that digital recruitment would be central to the group’s progression, and it also knew that LinkedIn would play a huge role. The platform would be instrumental in helping Digital Talent Hunters to connect people’s talents and dreams with successful companies.
“We are interested in finding out what candidates are interested in and what their dreams and goals are,” explained Julie Lavigne, Business Unit Manager Digital Inflow at House of HR. “We listen to our candidates very carefully. We usually spend an hour talking either on the phone or video call. It’s vital we find out what motivates and drives them before we find them the perfect opportunity.”
So, how has Digital Talent Hunters and House of HR used LinkedIn to transform how they operate and build desirable talent pools and what plans does the group have for the future?
THE CHALLENGE
Time to get on board with digital recruitment
House of HR prides itself on providing clients with detailed pictures of the recruitment market, including opportunities, market shifts, and trends. In 2015, PowerHouse Accent’s team of recruiters were given access to LinkedIn Talent Solutions, but the group soon discovered that its “traditional” recruiters were not taking full advantage of the platform and its many benefits. Accent needed a different approach; it knew that digital recruitment was the way forward. It also recognised that LinkedIn was going to have a huge impact on the recruitment world – it needed to “jump on that train”.
“Given the fact that LinkedIn is a valuable network and not a job board, we quickly realised that how we approached and managed talent was key,” said Julie. “So we created a dedicated unit called Digital Talent Hunters that focused solely on building talent pools through LinkedIn. This enabled us to write a new recruitment journey.”
THE SOLUTION
Creating talent pools using digital tools
Julie heads up House of HR’s digital inflow team called Digital Talent Hunters, a unit of 15 people that only use LinkedIn to develop talent pools and find the most interesting, talented, and motivated individuals, who are not actively searching for a new job.
“We’re called Digital Talent Hunters because we source talent using digital tools,” continued Julie. “We source, interview, and engage the best talent using LinkedIn tools and then we present these amazing candidates to the different PowerHouses within House of HR and ask them to find the right match and opportunity for these talented individuals.
“By using LinkedIn tools, we are able to go to our Powerhouses with these exciting individuals so that they can go to their clients with candidates that are often difficult to find and engage.”
According to Marie Driesen, Talent Connector at House of HR, the group is known for being innovative. She said: “In a candidate-driven market, LinkedIn gives us the opportunity to engage with talent and we can connect with far more people and build longer, more meaningful relationships with everyone in the recruitment process.”
Turning the recruitment process upside down
Digital Talent Hunters has turned the recruitment cycle upside down. Rather than talking to candidates about specific roles, the unit listens to candidates and captures their needs. The candidates are then presented to recruiters at Powerhouses, who then think of interesting opportunities that their clients may have, or they may have to find an entirely new opportunity. However, this process cannot happen without having access to talented individuals and engaged candidates with in-demand skills.
Geertje Jacobs, Expert Digital Talent Hunter at House Of HR, explained: “We use LinkedIn Talent Insights to get an overview of how talent shifts in the marketplace, and we can present this information to our clients, who are able to get an overview of the recruitment landscape. These insights mean we can easily shift to skills-based recruitment if we need to, it means we can be more targeted in our approach, and it demonstrates that we are professionals in our field.”
Let’s get visible
Digital Talent Hunters shares market intelligence through social posts on LinkedIn. The posts showcase the unit and give it “more visibility”. This is paramount if it wishes to continue finding the right talent and it wants candidates and clients to understand its values and principles.
“We are proud of how our company has grown,” continued Julie. “Our company page on LinkedIn has almost 10,000 followers and we manage our Career Page ourselves. The effort we put in can be seen in our high InMail acceptance rate. This is because we have focused on how to use LinkedIn tools correctly, including spending a lot of time creating personalised InMails. We have found that our response rate is higher than our peers.”
House of HR’s partnership with LinkedIn is a great success. In fact, a year ago, House of HR evolved its partnership and entered into an Enterprise agreement with LinkedIn.
Marie added: “We’re very proud of our results. It’s always nice to help more people get a new job, but it’s also nice to see that we provide a different experience, one that differentiates us from other recruiters. We specialise in ‘phygital’ recruitment, a combination of digital and physical. Our candidates tell us that we do recruitment differently and our results show that people like the way we work; how we work is something we are proud of. Digital Talent Hunters has plans to grow. It currently operates in Belgium, but will expand to the Netherlands in autumn 2022, and to Germany in 2023. Compared to a traditional recruitment approach, we are less commercial and less aggressive,” commented Julie. “We are more oriented towards long-term relationships and quality of service. We engage with strong candidates and so people want to work with us.”
As a result, LinkedIn is fundamental to the business and the future of Digital Talent Hunters. Julie said: “Without LinkedIn, our business unit would not exist. Great results show that we make a difference in terms of added value with the talent we can deliver to our Powerhouses. For example, within our unit, we have a team of six recruiters that specifically work with Ctrl-F, a Boutique that specialises in technical and construction engineering. In 2021 38% of all Ctrl-F placements within engineering and construction were delivered by Digital Talent Hunters with LinkedIn. In addition, year 2022 to date, this figure has increased to 43%”
Julie concluded: “We have worked with LinkedIn for many years and the way we work together has proven to be vastly beneficial. I am certain that our relationship will continue to grow and so I look forward to seeing where the platform can take us.”
Main product used:
THE RESULTS
High hire rates
38% of all Ctrl-F placements within engineering and construction were delivered by Digital Talent Hunters with LinkedIn. In addition, year 2022 to date, this figure has increased to 43%
Significant year-on-year growth
LinkedIn has attributed significantly to Digital Talent Hunters growth. In fact, in 2021, placements grew by 78%
Highly engaged audience
40% – acceptance rate of personalised InMails in 2021
In their own words
"We realised early on that people using LinkedIn wanted a different approach compared to traditional recruitment flows and funnels. It was more about connecting the dots and long-term interaction to find out when and where we could match talent with the right opportunity. This knowledge helps us a lot today in a job market where everyone has the luxury of choosing between at least ten different jobs. We learned early that advice as a service, knowledge of a specific industry, and offering a fast, easy and fun recruitment flow are key."
"Thanks to LinkedIn, we are able to connect and build long-term relationships with many talented individuals. This enables us to write an innovative recruitment strategy."
"LinkedIn Talent Insights helps us to gain information about the most in demand and rising skills and facilitates our shift to skills-based recruitment even more."
About House of HR
House of HR is comprised of 10 PowerHouses and more than 40 Boutiques, all are specialised and active in temporary and permanent talent solutions and in engineering and consulting. The House of HR employs more than 4,000 people. The group had a turnover of €2.2 billion in 2021. House of HR is renowned for its digital HR innovations and entrepreneurial spirit and has been outperforming the market ever since it was founded.
House of HR has more than 500 offices, spread around Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, and Romania.
INDUSTRY:
Human Resources Services
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES:
1,001 - 5,000
HEADQUARTERS:
Roeselare, Belgium