Supporting technical recruitment in competitive international markets.
Summary
Global healthcare technology company, Cerner has been on a rapid growth trajectory prior to its recent acquisition by Oracle. Our flexible, fast and friendly team were happy to step in to support technical recruitment during a peak period.
Challenges
- New business wins leading to increased workload
- Competitive international markets for talent
- Ambitious growth targets
Results
- Rapid onboarding of our Talent Acquisition Consultants to assist with demand
- Strong technical recruiters step straight in to fill difficult roles
- Supported business growth that attracted Cerner’s acquisition by Oracle.
Introducing our client, Oracle Cerner.
Oracle Cerner is a global healthcare technology company that designs, builds and implements software solutions for healthcare companies such as the UK’s NHS. We recently spoke with Kirsty Lowe, Oracle Cerner’s senior talent acquisition manager to hear about her experience working with us and how the recruitment team has helped to fuel success. Thanks to this growth, Cerner has recently been acquired by Oracle, so they have an exciting future ahead continuing to innovate within the healthcare market.
A different approach meant recruiters joined the business straight away.
Kirsty’s international recruitment team includes 10 team members working across Europe. It’s a busy recruitment function working across some challenging geographies. Recruiter On Demand initially came on board as the team knew they faced an imminent increase in their workload.
Kirsty explains “It was definitely a different approach than we were used to. Whenever we’ve needed support before we’d have gone to a contractor directly or via an agency. Whereas what James was outlining was that they could help with the onboarding meaning we could get somebody working for us straight away. It was ideal for us as we needed a quick fix and we could just concentrate on getting their recruiters up to speed. They were ready to go from day one and were really keen and eager to be supporting us.”
Initially, 3 Recruiter On Demand Talent Acquisition Consultants took care of a handful of vacancies each whilst working closely with Cerner’s in-house team. They were shortly responsible for 10 to 13 vacancies each, initially in Romania and then also in other markets.
“The recruiters that they gave to us were really strong technical recruiters so they were able to step straight into the roles we were recruiting.”
~ Kirsty Lowe, Senior Talent Acquisition Manager, Oracle Cerner.
Growing in challenging international markets.
Investing in the relationship and sharing learnings between our experienced Talent Acquisition Consultants and Cerner’s in-house team set us off on the right footing. It’s invaluable when clients spend a little time explaining their business and culture so that our recruiters can best represent the opportunities. Our consultants then picked up a number of software engineering vacancies for Cerner in Romania.
“Romania was definitely our toughest market at that time, plus we had some difficult positions to fill. A lot of tech companies have started recruiting in Romania recently. So the demand there for software engineers is now through the roof and salaries are now also increasing.” ~ Kirsty Lowe, Senior Talent Acquisition Manager, Oracle Cerner.
The in-house team members with specialist knowledge of the Romanian market shared the challenges and expectations of candidates in this area. Romanian recruitment tends to be very relationship-led, which can be difficult to compete with when you’re contacting candidates for the first time from overseas. As always, our experienced Talent Acquisition Consultants considered the specific needs of the client business and adapted their approach to the Romanian market.
A flexible approach to recruitment services.
The Cerner team was also impressed with the flexibility of the offering from Recruiter on Demand. They encouraged our recruiters to concentrate on candidate sourcing, whilst retaining much of the recruitment admin and onboarding work in-house. This is something that clients often appreciate and that Kirsty values having access to in the future:
“The thing I like about them is that they have different services. We had a recruiter embedded with us managing the full recruiting cycle. Whereas I know they also have a sourcing service where they could source candidates for us rather than doing the full recruitment which could be really useful. It depends on what’s going on for us and how much time our in-house team has.”
We’re delighted to have been part of the Oracle Cerner team.
Our Talent Acquisition Consultants were delighted to work closely with the Oracle Cerner team and Kirsty shares her positive feedback too:
“The team members were fantastic, bubbly personalities who fit into our team. Everybody was extremely friendly and great to work with. We had weekly catch-ups with Jackie. I always felt I could be very honest and upfront and that feedback would be taken on board, so it’s a very open relationship.”
At Recruiter On Demand, we pride ourselves on having positive and constructive relationships with our clients and also finding ways to make their lives easier. We keep our processes simple and totally flexible so that we can just be here whenever and however we’re needed. We’re excited to see what Oracle Cerner’s next stage looks like for them now they’ve been acquired by Oracle and we share in Kirsty’s sentiment that we’d love to work with the team again.