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Reengineering the Recruitment Process

The skills needed in many roles are continually changing—and sources of talent are too.

The Covid-19 pandemic has upended many traditional business practices. When it comes to recruiting, the crisis has not so much disrupted as accelerated shifts in the talent landscape that were already under way, leaving many companies poorly served by their current hiring practices. In a period of steep unemployment, it might seem that companies looking to add workers would be in the driver’s seat. But job openings have also been rising in recent months, meaning that competition for top talent remains keen—and in uncertain times, bringing on the right people is more important than ever.

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HR transformation case study

Hyatt’s talent strategy transformation

A talent for caring: How Hyatt is activating its purpose and transforming culture to unlock growth for colleagues and the business

Client:  Hyatt Hotels Corporation Our Role:  Help design and implement a Talent Philosophy and an associated Playbook, a resource to allow leaders to move the business forward through consistent, focused, yet flexible Talent management. Industry:   Hospitality and leisure Services:   Workforce Transformation , People and organization

Bringing purpose to life on a global scale

Hyatt had rallied around a unifying purpose— we care for people so they can be their best. Hyatt’s purpose resonated instantly within the organization because “care” is at the core of Hyatt’s DNA. While “care” can be limited to only a feeling, Hyatt sees it as more: It’s an action taken that starts with listening and empathy, resulting in caring action that leads to people being their best. With this in mind, Hyatt began to take a fresh look at how its colleagues could be their best. In doing so, Hyatt realized that managers and their teams needed a clearer framework for understanding their roles and accountabilities. They needed a simpler approach to be more consistent and confident in making people decisions (how they hire, develop, grow and reward colleagues) and how they create a culture where colleagues can be their best selves every day at work through enhanced focus on leading inclusively and creating the right environment for colleagues’ wellbeing.

The starting point? Listening and understanding the root issues by conducting extensive research with colleagues around the world to discover the leadership behaviors that most successfully drive business outcomes. With more than 120,000 colleagues working in more than 875 hotels in over 60 countries on six continents, it was also time to optimize its HR processes, tools and systems; designing around the needs of the business and removing inconsistencies and fragmentation in an effort to improve operational effectiveness and increase colleague and job candidate satisfaction. Hyatt’s HR leaders aspired to create a superior Talent experience to bring purpose to life for every colleague and potential colleagues—and, by extension, for every guest and customer—in its hotels worldwide.

“One of the most rewarding aspects of our work with Hyatt has been participating in the evolution of a significant HR transformation that impacts everyone in the organization on some level, and ultimately, Hyatt guests worldwide. We were inspired by Hyatt’s commitment to including the perspectives of its people in every region.” Jon Glick, Principal, PwC

Design-thinking + analytics + change management = a vision forward

When Christy Sinnott, Hyatt’s Talent Management Leader, first met PwC’s account and HR consulting team and began discussions about their shared passion for purpose-focused organizations, data driven decisions, and culture, none could have known that these discussions would evolve into a multi-year effort to transform Hyatt’s talent strategy. The HR transformation journey has engaged PwC professionals with subject matter experience in every aspect of HR program design and management. Activating Hyatt’s leadership development model through talent development training targeted at Hyatt's top and rising leaders was the first step. With a new set of expectations for leaders in place, Hyatt asked PwC to help design and implement a Talent Philosophy and an associated Playbook, a resource to allow leaders to move the business forward through consistent, focused, yet flexible Talent management. A current state assessment helped identify challenges and gaps; a blueprint for success helped to facilitate alignment of business and people strategies; and plans for the future state supported development of a clear and compelling Talent Philosophy. That Philosophy—a series of six commitments to its colleagues—is grounded in Hyatt’s purpose and values and designed to guide the relationship between leaders and their teams. The Playbook maps Hyatt’s People strategies to specific systems, processes and procedures to support transparent and consistent standards across the organization.

“PwC helped us understand how applying the lens of purpose could transform and focus HR structures and processes to create world-class leaders and, subsequently, to re-imagine the entire talent experience. In a global organization of our size and complexity, this has been an amazing collaboration among so many people, including our colleagues around the world.” Christy Sinnott, Senior Vice President of Talent Management, Hyatt

Re-imagine the talent experience to help Hyatt and their colleagues map a route to growth

With the Playbook underway, Hyatt’s HR leaders realized that while they had done a lot to evolve their strategy and systems around Talent, there was much more they wanted to do. They invited PwC to help them re-imagine the entire talent experience, with the goal of improving internal processes on a global scale to support strategic workforce planning and permit colleagues to pursue their own growth as the organization continues to grow. PwC teams helped Hyatt identify pain points, create diverse personas and stories to envision colleagues’ overall experience from pre-hire through promotion, and map opportunities to promote a clear understanding of, and commitment to, brand and purpose. Along the way of this extended journey, the PwC team helped support Hyatt with a multi-year colleague listening program; create a roadmap for the implementation of digital platforms to support efficient HR processes across the organization; consider strategies to advance Hyatt’s commitment to Inclusion and Diversity; and develop specific tools and methods to measure success and business outcomes.

“Inclusion is a core organizational capability at Hyatt that will continue to drive many aspects of our business, including Talent. Working with PwC to further our inclusion goals has been extremely helpful and timely.” Malaika Myers, Chief Human Resource Officer, Hyatt

Creating an ideal future-state experience

Demographics shift. The business climate changes. Guest expectations evolve. One constant for Hyatt is its culture of care which is at the heart of its business strategy. Scaling an enhanced talent experience worldwide will allow Hyatt to enable colleagues to be their best and achieve business outcomes as Hyatt continues on its growth trajectory.

The team is now actively working to advance care for colleagues in many ways:

• A Global Leadership Performance Model that helps drive the behaviors that drive results creating a high-performing culture that can adapt to the changing business climate.
• A streamlined and improved candidate experience , including a redesigned applicant process, new on-boarding tools and resources, and an evolving new hire orientation program, that Hyatt anticipates to reduce source-to-hire time and increase retention .
• Diversity Business Resource Groups and the Global Inclusion & Diversity Council are helping to develop a robust pipeline of diverse leaders for the future to execute current and future business strategy, increase retention, differentiate Hyatt as an employer of choice and drive greater personalization of the guest experience.
• A New People Leader Curriculum provides new managers with a Talent Playbook that creates consistency across the organization, empowers leaders of people to make the right decisions for their teams , and brings clarity to the supporting systems and processes.

At the center of the work is an intense focus on:

• Eliminating key pain points  for colleagues so we  bring the right roles to the right people at the right time . Transparency around and opportunities for career growth and development, performance measurement and rewards.
• Simplifying HR programs and processes  contributes to a  shared understanding of responsibility for leading talent.  HR managers work closely with people managers to help them proactively build and develop their teams, with flexible customization to support distinct functions, hotels and regions.
• Expanding  talent and recruitment outreach to institutions in diverse communities  to drive an expanded, more diverse candidate pool, and in some cases identify  business development opportunities .

“Participating in CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion, alongside PwC, has been a valuable part of Hyatt’s inclusion journey, particularly the collective effort of organizations to look at bias and to share challenges and best practices. Creating a sense of belonging and community is especially important in the hospitality industry for both our colleagues and our guests.” Tyronne Stoudemire, Vice President of Inclusion and Diversity, Hyatt

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Candidates: Are you interviewing and need support?

Unilever + HireVue

Unilever finds top talent with hirevue assessments, + challenge, outdated processes rooted in paper, phone screens and manual assessments. 4-6 months to sift through 250,000 applications to hire 800 individuals..

A global leader in consumer goods, Unilever’s products can be found in more than 190 countries. Their 400+ brands meet their consumer’s needs across personal and home care, food, and more. To meet rapidly changing and dynamic consumer demands, Unilever recognized the need to attract talent from around the globe, appealing specifically to the millennial workforce. Melissa Gee Kee, Strategy Director to CHRO and Global HR4HR Director, explains, “Our executives expect that 60 percent of our workforce to be Millennials by 2020. With this in mind, we needed to engage with this generation through innovative technology that is engaging, dynamic and able to move quickly.”

Unilever’s recruitment transformation began with its Future Leaders Programme, a highly selective programme for recent college graduates that selects 800 individuals from a pool of 250,000 applicants.

The team at Unilever partnered with multiple solutions to create an end to end engaging and digital candidate experience including HireVue to initiate mobile-phone based recorded video interviews , and interview-assessment technology .

Through HireVue Assessments, artificial-intelligence was able to filter up to 80% of the candidate pool  using data points, ultimately surfacing those candidates that are most likely to be successful at Unilever.

At each stage of the process, the candidate is receiving and providing feedback, regardless of if they are selected for a position. Unilever has deployed in over 53 countries in multiple languages with over 80% of the candidate feedback as positive. Not only has the process been significantly improved for candidates, saving over 50,000 hours in candidate time, the Unilever team has seen over 1 million pounds in savings in just one year, recruiting time saved of 75% and hired and the largest class of diverse hires (gender and ethnicity).

Experience firsthand how HireVue can transform your hiring process.

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Elite Human Capital

Executive search. recruitment. talent advisory. career coaching. outplacement., case studies in the recruitment process – an assessment method for gathering data on a candidate.

Recently I started recruiting for a management consulting company who uses client case studies as part of their selection process. For them, it has proven to be an effective way of gathering information on a candidate to assess suitability.

To better understand the use of case studies in the recruitment process, my assistant Laura and I did research into the topic, this blog post is to share that information with you.

An overview of case studies in the recruitment process

Case studies are used as a method of competency measuring. Competency methods can focus on technical abilities, social and behavioural skills, or a combination of the two.

Case studies are most popular in management consulting (though they are used in some other industries) since they are able to mimic the kinds of tasks that would be required in the job.

They are done face-to-face during a specified time slot or given to the candidate to complete in their own time.

See Hiring by Competency Models, Patty Grigoryev (2006)

University of Sydney, Case study interviews https://sydney.edu.au/careers/students/applying-for-jobs/interview-tips/case-study-interviews.html

Research on case study efficacy

The premise behind administering a case study as an assessment method is that it offers a level playing field, to some degree, by allowing shortlisted candidates to demonstrate their technical abilities and personal qualities irrespective of past experience and qualification(s).

Case studies enable interviewers to see the strengths and weaknesses of candidates in action, including:

• Engaging in logical and analytical reasoning.
• Thinking creatively and generating innovative solutions.
• Problem-solving.
• Working under time pressure.
• Effective communication skills, including presenting in front of one or several interviewers and using a whiteboard to express concepts.

Case studies are detailed in their nature, add cost to the overall recruitment process (because they require time and resources to administer) and are often one of the final stages in the recruitment process.

Reducing the risk of a bad hire

It is well-established that the costs of a bad hire for a business are huge, especially in leadership roles where it can affect the performance of the whole team.

The hard costs of a bad hire are estimated to range between 50% and 200% of the first-year salary. In management consulting, a bad hire cannot only affect the internal team – a poor client experience can have significant impacts from a brand and billing perspective.

Finding ways to reduce the number of bad hires isn’t easy, case studies have been developed to provide additional data points to make a more informed hiring decision. Using competency modelling methods such as case studies, it has been shown to increase success in hiring decisions, with the most significant improvement stemming from a better culture fit.

Talent Management 360, Using case studies to recruit talent https://talentmanagement360.com/using-case-studies-to-recruit-talent/

Case studies and management consulting companies

Big 4 accounting firms and strategy consulting houses like McKinsey and Bain consistently use case studies in their recruitment process, for example:

PWC appears to only use case studies in relation to taxation and when hiring recent graduates. They are described as “provide students with realistic fact situations in which a number of tax problems and opportunities can be identified”. They acknowledge that law students and business students may choose to approach them differently and give some background regarding the issues and deliverables expected, such as that students are expected to “incorporate a certain amount of tax planning into their solutions”.

https://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers/university-relations/tax-case-studies.html

By contrast, Deloitte’s approach is broader. The case interview is designed to assess problem-solving and analytical skills, as well as logic and strategy. However, it is also designed to give candidates an insight into their prospective role, since the cases align with real projects. They clearly step out a five-step approach that candidates should use to address the case interview and give a list of helpful tips that they recommend will help interviewees get the most out of the experience. There is also an interactive case interview practice website ( http://caseinterviewprep.deloitte.com/ ) designed to assist.

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/careers/articles/join-deloitte-careers-case-interview-tips.html

McKinsey & Company who are notorious for gruelling recruitment methods, with some prospective employee’s having up to 20 interviews before receiving an offer, including a compulsory case interview.

McKinsey offer four example case interviews, which can all be found at this link:

https://www.mckinsey.com/careers/interviewing

Bain states that any candidate applying for a consulting role should expect a case interview, and those cases will be based on Bain’s client work. They provide two examples, as well as a mock interview for candidates to watch:

https://www.bain.com/careers/interview-prep/case-interview/

Capital One

Capital One also has a detailed case study guide which demonstrates what they will assess (problem solving and analytical skills) as well as providing examples:

https://jobs.capitalone.co.uk/business-analyst-case-study-guide

Time allotted

The PWC case studies are to be done in the student’s own time, but there is a general guideline offered: “The time required of the student to complete the case requirements will vary greatly, depending upon the level of tax knowledge of the individual student, their software skills, and the number and type of issues in each case. As a very general guideline, each case study, with all issues included, should require not less than 10 hours of issue formation, research, and analysis by a graduate tax student, before the final deliverable(s) are developed.”

Deloitte’s case interview preparation page states that each case is 15-20 minutes long but does not give any set time limits and there is no suggestion that responses are timed.

See PWC Case Studies in Taxation https://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers/university_relations/documents/Case-Studies-in-Taxation-2018.pdf

Measuring the responses

PWC’s case studies are designed to test both technical skills (tax knowledge, Excel ability) and broader skills such as problem solving and creativity. It is stated that the ‘deliverables’ can be in many forms including “a letter to the client identified in the case study, a memo to the client file, or preparing a ruling request for the IRS. Some case study users require oral presentations. These may take the form of a straight presentation or role-play in the setting of a client meeting, resolution of an audit, or representation of a client in a court.” Actually measuring these is not expressly dealt with, but the document does provide a set of solutions to each case study for comparison, akin to a marking key.

By comparison Deloitte is focused less on finding the ‘right answer’ and emphasises that candidates will do well by clearly demonstrating a logical thought process. Having a clear structure and acknowledging any assumptions are listed as recommendations. Possible answers are given in the example attached and they focus on having both justifications and implications for each point. It’s all about the ‘how’ rather than the ‘what’. For numerical/technical questions however, there is a clear right and wrong.

Other methods of work sample testing

There are alternative methods for collecting data points on a candidate, these include: written questionnaires, take home or in office real life job tasks, online assessment tools and group assessment centres.

One hiring manager I was recruiting for would take a full two hours to conduct an interview with a candidate. In the first hour he would cover off behavioural and company ‘fit’ questions, in the second hour he would launch into a long list of technical questions, including real case study examples from working at his company.

This thorough approach made the hiring manager more confident in his decision to hire the individual (or not hire if the candidate wasn’t strong enough).

Here are some other quality articles on evidence based interviewing and testing.

• The Case for Evidence Based Interviewing: Part 1 and Part 2
• Assessing Soft Skills

When I’m engaged to conduct a recruitment process for a client I recommend gathering as many data points on the candidate as possible – including a type of work sample, if possible.

I’m always looking for ways to help organisations recruit better. Leveraging years of experience in corporate recruiting I can assist with finding the bottlenecks and weak points in your hiring process and improving hiring outcomes.

Find out more about my services here: https://elite-human-capital.com/consulting-services/

To talk with me about how I can help, make contact today.

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Top 06 Creative Recruitment Strategies To Transform Your Next Recruiting Program

/blog/creative-recruitment-06-essential-strategies-case-studies/ - 09-12-2019

We’re living in the digital era and information is more than abundant, job searchers are inundated with endless data. But that equals intense competition for companies, whose information, if not memorable, is easily lost in the hassle.

The paradigm has shifted, companies no longer hold the power, candidates do . They have infinite choices nowadays and recruiters have to actively search for them, instead of waiting for them to find you.

With the advent of social media and popular platforms like the late Vines, the average attention span has shortened considerably. Regular ads are easily skipped, and companies are faced with a new challenge of capturing the potential candidates’ attention. So if you’re looking for applicants, it’s time to be creative with your recruiting campaigns.

Promote Employee's Experience

Millennials and Gen Z are notoriously idealistic. A good income isn’t their priority anymore, lifestyle quality is.

They pay a lot of attention to the work they do and whether they enjoy it or not. This surely has something to do with philosophies. Candidates at that age are usually contemplating their purposes in life and doing whatever it takes to figure it out. And once they do, they are willing to take measures to fulfill that lifelong mission.

And after they have chosen the field of work that they aspire to do, they will focus on the workplace culture which you need to focus on as well. Happiness is a most sought-after commodity. So one of the best creative recruitment approaches you can use to capture their attention is to showcase your employees’ experience. Show them what it’s like to work for you, and if they’re interested, you’re in.

How do you implement this creative recruitment strategy?

• First things first, hold induction seminars where you establish what it’s like to work in your company.
• Ask your candidates what their values are and what culture they would like to see as an employee.
• Overtly promote that specific details that your applicants love and which makes you stand out from the other recruiters.
• Realize their wishes. Stay true to your promise.

Case in point: Fiverr - a freelance service market - has adapted this strategy and made a recruitment video to tackle the generic concept of such a video. In the clip, the narrator speaks directly to the candidates, giving the ad a personal touch. By mocking the conventional workplace, they emphasize the freedom freelancers have, thus attracting more applicants looking to do freelance work.

Create An Employee's Referral Program

No one knows what’s going on in your business and understands your workplace culture better than your own employees. If there’s someone your potential candidates should consult, it’s your employees. Your employees can offer the best insights for those interested in applying for a position at your company.

Recruit your own people to be your ambassadors. Before letting them roam, equip them with the necessary knowledge, values, visions of your company. Hold briefing sessions on how to communicate with people about your business.

To motivate them, create an intricate rewarding system. You can start with basic incentives like a raise, a promotion, a gift for every certain number of candidates they successfully refer. After that, develop the referral into a whole program.

Here is an outline of how you can incorporate this creative recruitment method:

• Create a referral program, communicate with your employees about the basics of it.
• Equip them with the right mindset, have them learn your company’s values by heart. Remember, Millennials and Gen Z are idealistic.
• Instruct them on how to approach people and start talking about your company. And do tell them who to approach, you might want to be selective.
• Give your employees incentives, preferably commissions. Reward them based on the number of successful referrals.

Take Accenture as an example.

Accenture really turned the table with their referral program by giving the power of referral to their candidates. During the application process, candidates can pick the “Get Referred!” option - by connecting via their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles, the Accenture website scans through their acquaintances and comes up with a list of people who work at the company. After that, a candidate can send a referral request to the employee and submit the request with their application.

Build Your Brand's Image On Social Media

Everything is shifting towards social media these days and everyone is using it. This is without a doubt one of the most influential inventions of humankind’s history. It’s a waste of creativity if you are not taking advantage of it.

The Millennials and Gen Z are active netizens. They spend a fair amount of their lives on the Internet, not just socially, but also as a way to search for career opportunities. Moreover, who wouldn’t love to work for a tech savvy employer who is up to date with the latest trends?

That said, social media is a hard to wield sword. You’re going to need to carefully sketch out a plan if you want to utilize it properly. Here are some basic guidelines to start with:

• Build a reputation for your company. Regularly update what is going on in your workplace. This is both a way of showcasing your culture and also a way of making an impression with familiarity.
• Involve your employees/ employers in sharing posts on social media. This is also an implementation of the employee referral program, so you’re killing two birds with one stone.
• Promote your upcoming events. Share them on Facebook, on Twitter, create stories on Instagram and Snapchat.
• Host online Q&A sessions. This does wonder to enhance your credibility and transparency.

And with the help of virality, you can create content like this recruiting video from SodaStream . Take notice of how effectively they promote their culture:

• First, they boldly tread the path almost no corporation has ever taken before - to hilariously mock the overpositism often seen in corporate recruiting videos where everyone can be a rainmaker. In just 1 minutes into the clip, they are able to show humor, honesty and creativity - factors that are strongly resonant with Millennials and Gen Z.
• Second, they chose the right champion - The Mountain from Game of Thrones! Not only he is one of the most recognizable actors from the cast of the most popular show in the world, his personal branding has also been heavily associated with eco-friendly brands.
• Last, they ended the video on a heart-warming note about diversity and inclusion, by showing the real employees who work at Sodastream. By being so down-to-earth and human-centered, Sodastream successfully conveyed their core value to potential candidates in just over 2 minutes!

Leverage Technology

With the advent of a myriad of new inventions, convenience is more accessible than ever. Doing manual work is now considered time consuming and not as effective as can be.

Let’s say you’re representing your company at a campus recruiting event. You would show up with printed sign-in papers and have undergraduates fill in their contact information. After such an event, your team would have to squint at multiple hand-ins just to make out what the prospects have written, then manually enter those data into a computer-based format (and this doesn’t guarantee 100% precision) and again, manually send emails to follow-up with students post-event.

All of that could be done with the help of technology leveraging. At its core, technology leverage is the ability to gain value by automating everything, leading to more efficient time and expense management. Better yet, technology, especially mobile technology can significantly boost candidates’ experience.

Case Study An exemplary case study is National Grid. Previously, when attending campus recruiting events, the team would show up with printed sign-in paper and had prospects note down their contact information. Unfortunately, due to compliance issues and following the Legal Team’s policies, the team couldn’t collect resumes to bring back to the office, meaning all the data-collecting work had to be done right at the events. The manual processing approach and the follow-up after each event was inefficient and frustrating to National Grid Recruiting team. They know they have to find a right recruiting software to help with all manual tasks.

When National Grid adopted a recruiting platform, they immediately saw concrete results:

• Save 50-60 hours of administrative and manual work per semester
• Increase 10% in the number of student applying to National Grid every year since 2017
• Increase the company branding by appearing to the millennials and gen Z in that they, too, are a tech-savy companies

So how do they do it, exactly?

At offline recruitment events, the team utilizes both their smart mobile phones to collect the prospects’ information and iPads to have students manually input their data in case they forget to bring their resumes. This way, the team avoids missing out on any potential candidates. “The students’ reactions to us and themselves using the app have been really positive,” they love seeing a tech-savvy company who is committed to implement cutting edge technology solution into the daily work practices.

Read more about National Grid Case Study

Organize Competitions

This is a really good way to pick who’s best at their field. An obvious perk of this method is that you can save a lot of money spent on head hunting. Just inform the public of a contest going on, and it will attract just the right talents.

Remember that scene in “The social network” where Zuckerberg held a small competition to see who is the first to debug a software while also taking shots periodically, and the winner gets to join the Facebook team? The process is just as simple as that.

One famous example of this method is when the MGM Grand, one of Las Vegas’s biggest casinos, took inspiration from the TV show Iron Chef when looking for a new head chef for one of their Asian restaurants. Contestants are handed a secret ingredient and asked to put together a 4 course meal in under 1 hour.

Create Out-of-the-box Advertisements

You’re looking for a creative recruitment strategy, why not consider making creative ads? If done right, each ad can go viral, promoting your values and workplace culture in a fun way that is sure to make people notice. Now you’re hogging all the attention, well done!

Choose the most creative team, let them roam. Advertising is an art, you can create hidden ads, viral videos, viral photos, and God forbid, memes. Meme videos are part of the Internet culture now, it would be such a shame to pass on this gold mine.

Each of the above creative recruitment strategies comes with an example of a good ad. There are many more to see and to learn from. Be creative, that’s what creative recruiting is about. If you need any inspiration, here are some examples:

If you want your recruiting campaign to succeed, you need to come up with out of the box recruiting strategies. We’re living in a fast paced world where it takes people less than 10 seconds to decide whether they want to read an article or watch a video or not. So be bold, be decisive, be assertive, and most of all, be over the top.

To sum up, when you think of creative recruitment, think about:

• Focus on showcasing your company culture, after all, that’s what your potential candidates care about.
• Put emphasis on the characteristics of the work they are expected to do.
• Actively hunt for candidates but at the same time, make them come to you, be it out of curiosity or of a predetermined goal. You don’t have to take control over them, let them have the variety of choice, you just have to be the best choice for them.
• Make technology an ally. Boost your results with technology leverage.
• And last but not least, take advantage of the power of social media, and the virality it brings about. Attention to small details really helps you reach a massive amount of audience, therefore giving you a myriad of choices, just like that of the candidates.

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Case Studies | Enterprise Solutions at Hays

Case studies title, case studies.

By supporting our clients through their workforce challenges with a new approach to delivering on their workforce objectives.

case studies block

Australia | Local Government | MSP

Improved governance, compliance and cost controls through implementation of VMS with a complex organisation.

China | Chemical | RPO

We created a talent pool from internal and external databases to identify senior candidates who were a good match and whose non-compete agreements were set to expire.

Europe | Life Sciences & Pharma | MSP

Harmonised and efficient procurement process for contingent workforce as well as workload reduction for procurement and the managers.

Germany | Global Conglomerate | MSP | General Electric

GE and Hays have created a supplier portfolio, optimised in terms of quality and quantity by using scorecards, supplier development programmes and workforce assessments.

Germany | Semiconductors | MSP

We helped our customer obtain a complete overview of all external employee assignments, thereby maximising efficiency and standardising compliance policies.

Malaysia | Chemical | RPO

Increased candidate satisfaction with better service and engagement which resulted in higher rate of offer acceptance.

USA | Financial Services | MSP

Find out how we took an organisations' time to offer from 23 business days to 12 and saved them $41 million.

USA & Canada | Manufacturing | RPO

New processes provided better efficiency and standardisation allowing us to address four different hiring changes in the past three years.

Canada | Telecommunications | MSP

By enabling and streamlining these processes we were then able to focus on developing innovative and forward-thinking strategies for our client.

Europe | Automotive | RPO for Tech

Tailoring our engagement and focusing on improving the application process we have increased candidate applications by 40%.

Europe | Telecommunications | MSP

Success in rolling out a multi-country MSP in a complex environment, enabling us to roll out a cost saving strategy that saved £1m in year one.

Germany | IT | MSP

With the introduction of our central VMS 3 Story Software, the procurement processes could be centralised and the staffing speed increased.

Global & UK | Technology | Early Careers & Total Talent

Reducing time to hire from 116 days to 56 days, improving the candidate journey and increased satisfaction.

UK | Construction | MSP

With the right suppliers and segmentation, this organisation has seen a significant increase in supplier fill rates from 86% to 94%.

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Read how we enabled an organisation streamline their processes to find and engage talent when they needed it at a fair price.

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We successfully replaced an existing provider with our MSP and VMS service and achieved a consolidation of eight independent companies of the group.

Halved time-to-fill rate in first 3 months, from 68 days to 32 days and now steadily maintaining time-to-fill under 25 days.

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Building quantified talent pools ready for speedy deployment, stronger engagement with the contractors and the assurance of supply.

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The PwC Case Interview (Including Strategy&) – A Complete Guide

• Last Updated January, 2024

PwC is an accounting firm with a huge consulting arm. Its consulting business is as large as those of Bain, BCG, and McKinsey combined. If you’re interested in landing a job in the consulting industry, it’s a great firm to apply to because its business combines strategy consulting (Strategy&) as well as business transformation/implementation (PwC).

If you want to know more about PwC consulting and Strategy&, you’re in the right place! In this article, we’ll discuss:

• An overview of PwC Consulting and Strategy&.
• The PwC recruitment process.
• The PwC case interview.
• The behavioral/fit interview.
• The PwC group case.
• The PwC individual presentation.
• Our 5 tips for preparing for PwC and Strategy& interviews.

Let’s get started!

PwC Consulting and Strategy& - An Overview

The pwc group case, the pwc recruitment process, the pwc individual presentation, the pwc case interview (including strategy&).

5 Tips for Preparing for PwC and Strategy& Interview

The PwC Behavioral Interview

PwC Consulting and Strategy & - An Overview

5 Tips for Preparing for PwC and Strategy & Interview

PwC employs over a quarter of a million people in 155 countries worldwide. Its operations are divided into two parts: Trust Solutions and Consulting Solutions. Trust Solutions focuses on its accounting and tax services. PwC Consulting Solutions help a broad spectrum of clients navigate complex business issues by leveraging PwC’s significant experience and range of capabilities.

Client case studies include:

• helping TransRe adopt an enterprise resource planning system to collect and manage data, offering insight and improved decision-making.
• supporting Chipotle to implement a loyalty program to improve customer relationships, build loyalty, and drive business growth.
• providing pro bono consulting to charity The Trevor Project to strengthen its technological capabilities and optimize its volunteer recruitment process.

How does PwC Consulting differ from Strategy&?

In 2014, PwC acquired Booz & Co., the commercial arm of consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, and renamed it Strategy&. While PwC Consulting focuses on typical management consulting cases and implementation projects, Strategy& specializes in strategy consulting.

Set up by PwC to attempt to compete with McKinsey, Bain, and BCG, Strategy& has over 3,000 consultants helping businesses shape their future strategies. Strategy& focuses on creating competitive advantage by “developing corporate and business unit strategies and building differentiating capabilities that outperform the competition.” ( Source: PwC )

Implementation of those strategies is handed over to PwC consulting teams. If you join PwC’s management consulting team you will, “help clients translate strategy into execution, closing the gap between ideas and outcomes, to transform the organization and achieve tangible business results.” (Source: PwC)

Like most other Big 4 firms (EY, Deloitte, and KPMG), the PwC recruitment process has multiple stages:

Stage 1: The PwC Application

For entry-level recruitment, the first stage of the PwC process is to submit an application form for the particular roles you’re interested in. You can search for your school’s application deadline on PwC’s interactive campus map. If you can’t find your school or have recently graduated, you should submit by their September deadline. You’ll be asked to pick your top 2 preferred office locations and you’ll need to submit a resume.

To learn more about how to write a stellar consulting resume, read Consulting Resume: Everything You Need to Know .

Stage 2: The PwC Online Test

A few hours after you’ve submitted your application, PwC will send you an assessment to complete via email. You have to complete the online test within 3 calendar days so it’s worth thinking about that when applying. The PwC online test is a series of games-based assessments to measure cognitive ability, behavioral preferences, and verbal and numerical reasoning.

Learn more by reading PwC Online Test .

Stage 3: The PwC Interview

If you successfully pass the online test, PwC will invite you to a series of interviews. These will include a case interview and behavioral interview and may include a group case and an individual presentation. The first of these interviews is sometimes conducted as a video interview where you’ll record your answers to a range of questions and case studies. Group interviews have traditionally been part of the recruiting process for sophomore consulting internship candidates and select other groups. It’s a good idea to clarify with your recruiting contact what types of interviews you’ll have.

In the past, the bulk of the remaining interviews, group, or individual activities took place during an assessment day. However, for 2021-22 recruitment, PwC US is moving to virtual interviewing. For Consulting Services, you’ll face two virtual, live interviews back-to-back. If you move forward in the process, there may be a final additional  interview.

Nail the case & fit interview with strategies from former MBB Interviewers that have helped 89.6% of our clients pass the case interview.

The case interview process is similar for both PwC Consulting Services and Strategy&. The case interviews are both candidate-led, which means you’ll be responsible for deciding what analysis you want to do and what the approach should be.

The PwC case interviews for Consulting Services applicants typically focus on profit optimization, cost optimization, and market sizing. For example, a recent candidate was asked to “Run me through a market sizing estimate of the iPhone market in Asia.”

For a breakdown of precisely what each of these types is, read Case Interview Types: Master Common Ones Before Your Interview .

The PwC Strategy& case interview includes more strategy-focused cases (such as make-vs-buy decisions, new product introduction, M&A, etc.), but how you tackle a case interview is the same no matter which area you’re applying for.

Following this 4-step model gives you the best chance for success:

• Understand the question . Make sure you understand what it is you’re being asked to do. Repeat back to the interviewing team what exactly you think the task is so they can correct you if necessary.
• Create a structured approach to the problem . Analyze what data you’ve been given and identify areas where you need more information about the client’s problem. Use a business framework to explore the case further or, better yet, create one of your own that’s specific to the issues in your case.
• Ask relevant questions and analyze the problem . Begin to share the assumptions you’re making about the case and ask the interviewing team questions about areas where you’re uncertain or need more data to inform your judgments.
• Effectively communicate your recommendation . Walk the interviewing team through your recommendation(s), explaining how you used the data provided to back up your recommendations. Make sure you call out any assumptions made or any risks associated with the action you’re proposing.

The fit or behavioral interview is a way for interviewers to figure out how well candidates would work within the firm’s culture and how they’d be in front of clients. Interviewers want to feel that they could work well with you if you were part of their team and that you’d represent the firm effectively on client projects.

While the exact questions will differ between firms, here are ten common questions asked in behavioral interviews:

PwC's Core Values

PwC has 5 core values that define its culture and approach:     

• Act with integrity
• Make a difference
• Work together
• Reimagine the possible

It’s important to ensure that when answering interview questions, you keep these values in mind. For example, if the interviewer asks you to tell them more about yourself or what you do for fun, pick stories that show where you’ve made a difference, challenged the status quo, or tried something new.

If you’re interviewing for several different firms, it’s important to tailor your responses to each individual firm. Try not to rely on stock answers about why management consulting is the role for you. Many other candidates will also be waxing lyrical about working with the best people, on the most interesting projects, for the most exciting clients.

Try researching cases the firm has recently been involved in and explain why they’re interesting to you. Or look into work the firm does regarding corporate social responsibility and talk about how it aligns with your values.

The Best Answers to PwC Behavioral Interview Questions Are Stories

Frame your examples as stories. Stories engage interviewers even after a long day interviewing dozens of candidates. While you want to remain professional, it’s ok to talk with emotion as you share your stories. Interviewers want to see humans, not robots! One of PwC’s core values is ‘Care’ so interviewers want to know what’s important to you and more about the things that make you you.

Make sure you also reflect on your own learning from the examples you want to share in your interview. You’ll likely be asked about how you work in a team, how you handle conflict, and how you overcome failure. Using a model like the ASTAR(E) framework helps you remember to share the effect that going through that experience had on you and how it’s changed how you would approach things in the future.

For the Strategy& interview specifically, it’s worth noting that you may face more behavioral questions than you expect. PwC is keen to check that you’re not just using Strategy& as an MBB backup and wants to make sure you’re a great fit for the firm.

To learn more about acing the behavioral interview, read The Consulting Fit Interview: What to Say, What NOT to Say .

PwC has traditionally used a group case as part of its recruiting process during the assessment day for some applicants (most frequently, undergraduate sophomores applying for internships). A typical group case experience involves you working within a small group to solve a business case.

Interviewers assess both analytical and behavioral competencies as you work in your team to solve the case. This means you have 2 roles during a group case. First, you need to contribute to solving the case — providing analysis, making logical assumptions and judgments, and offering insight to shape the overall recommendation you present to the client.

Secondly, you need to showcase how well you can work within a team — offering an opinion, demonstrating active listening, summarizing and building on others’ points of view, and leading the team towards consensus.

Recent interviewees have not had a group case as part of their PwC interview process. This is likely due to Covid restrictions, so make sure you are ready for a group case in the event PwC reintroduces them. If you want more help on preparing for a group case interview, read This Is What You Need to Know to Pass Your Group Case Interview .

As part of the recruitment process, you may be asked to prepare an individual presentation. This comes in the form of a written case presentation. Unlike other firms, PwC releases the information you’ll need to prepare your recommendation 48 hours in advance of the interview.

Using the information provided, you’ll have to prepare a PowerPoint presentation showing your analysis of the data, explaining any assumptions you’ve made, and detailing your client recommendations.

On the day of the interview, you’ll spend 15–30 minutes presenting your findings and then 15–30 minutes taking questions on them from the interviewing team.

Bain and BCG commonly request a written case, so this may feel familiar if you’ve interviewed for them. For more information on preparing for a written case interview, check out Written Case Interviews – Everything You Need To Know .

5 Tips for Preparing for PwC and Strategy& Interviews

Now you’re clear on the different elements that make up the PwC interviews, here are our top 5 tips for acing them:

1. Research

Make sure you do your research before your PwC or Strategy& interview. Understand what it is about the firm that appeals to you, what type of case work they’re involved in, and how else they get involved in the community.

It can sometimes be helpful to figure out what a company isn’t as much as what it is. So compare PwC to other firms and note the differences and why PwC still appeals. Learn their core values and what a typical day would involve as an analyst, or the specific role you’re applying for.

Ensure you also know as much as possible about the format for the interview. Are you expected to complete several tasks or just one? How much time will you have? Will you have a single interviewer or multiple? Company websites often describe the people they’re looking for to join their team — those will be the attributes you’ll be assessed against, so make sure you’re clear on what they are.

2. Prepare and Practice

Once you’ve done all your research, start your preparation. Use case interview examples to practice your casing skills. The linked page includes several PwC case examples as well as ones from other consulting firms. Make sure you feel confident in your case interview math skills too.

For your behavioral interview, make sure you’ve prepared answers to typical questions such as “Tell me about yourself” and “How would you manage a challenging team member?” Make sure your answers follow the ASTAR(E) framework and that you’ve tailored them to show off how you meet the PwC core values. You can practice answering these questions with a friend or coach until you feel confident in your responses.

3. Follow a Structure

Consulting firms are looking for structured thinkers who can solve a wide variety of business problems. Show your structured problem-solving skills by creating a framework that identifies the key issues you want to address in the case and use this framework to keep your progress in the case on track. Building your answers around a framework can help ensure you cover all the important points succinctly and confidently.

4. Explain Your Approach and Any Assumptions

Remember your math teacher always used to tell you to show your work? Well, it’s the same during consulting interviews. If you’re using data or solving math problems during your PwC case interview and you end up with an incorrect answer, it’s important to gain as much credit as possible.

Maybe you just made a small error in your calculation but your assumptions and approach were sound. The interviewer will never know that unless you walk them through the steps you take as you’re solving the case. Make sure you talk aloud as you’re putting together the pieces of the case and ensure you clearly state any assumptions you’ve made as you present your final recommendation. By making your assumptions clear, you‘ll allow your interviewer to guide you if you get off-track.

5. Communicate Confidently

In the PwC case interview, once you’ve decided on a recommendation, make sure you communicate your thoughts confidently. While interviewers are obviously interested in your analytical skills, business acumen, and logical approach, they also care about how you’re going to appear in front of clients. They need you to be able to effectively communicate your thoughts and respond appropriately to questions and feedback.

This is also true of the behavioral interview, where your interviewers also care about how you’ll fit within their team and what it’d be like to work long hours on a project with you. They’ll expect you to talk with passion about things you care about, offer thoughtful or interesting stories in response to questions, and seem friendly, competent, and approachable.

– – – – –

In this article, we’ve covered:

• The difference between PwC Consulting and Strategy&.
• The stages of the PwC recruiting process.
• What you need to know about the PwC case interview, behavioral interview, group interview, and individual presentation.
• 5 tips for success in PwC interviews.

Still have questions?

• Our Ultimate Guide to Case Interview Prep .
• PwC Psychometric Assessment .
• The Big 4: How Do They Fit Into the Consulting Industry
• Group Case Interview .
• Written Case Interview .

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Thanks for turning to My Consulting Offer for advice on PwC case interviews. My Consulting Offer has helped almost 85% of the people we’ve worked with to get a job in management consulting. We want you to be successful in your consulting interviews too. For example, here is how Alex was able to get his offer from Strategy&.

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Amazon recruiting – a case study of a giant among children.

January 17, 2022

Compare their results to all others, and you too will call Amazon… A Giant Recruiting Machine.

Note this case study is designed for quick scanning.

Yes, Amazon recruiting is in a class by themselves because they relentlessly hire when others cry for applicants. Of course, I don’t loosely use the phrase “A giant among children.” However, after doing numerous corporate case studies over the years covering other recruiting powerhouses (including Google, Apple, and Facebook). I quickly found that their record recruiting volumes across a broad range of jobs and locations could only be labeled as breathtaking. And just by chance, if you think that I’m not giving enough credit to most other corporate recruiting functions (even Google pales in comparison). You should realize that only a mere 18% of HR professionals even describe their own recruiting function as “top-notch” or “advanced.”

The Six Pillars Of Recruiting Excellence At Amazon

This Amazon case study reveals the many factors that cause Amazon’s recruiting function to be so far ahead of the competition. They are truly a giant because they excel in each of the six pillars of excellence in recruiting. The six pillars that make Amazon so successful are:

• Their recruiting impacts business results
• Their proven capability of handling huge recruiting volumes across a wide range 
• Their fanatical insistence on quality hires
• A scientific data-driven recruiting approach is the foundation of their success
• They utilize a one-size-fits-one agile hiring process 
• Their targeted recruiting sub-programs are second to none

Let’s jump immediately to the first and most important strategic pillar – Amazon’s record-breaking strategic business and recruiting results. 

Pillar #1. Amazon’s Recruiting Impacts Business Results

Amazon recruiting is aiming to go beyond simply producing recruiting results. And to also directly impact their corporation’s business results. Those results include:

• Hiring is the single most important element in Amazon’s business success – Jeff Bezos made it clear. “Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been, and will continue to be, the single most important element of Amazon.com’s success” (that’s not just the most important HR function, but the most important business function). Jeff began making this recruiting priority clear in the company’s very first annual shareholder letter in 1998. Most other corporations don’t admit this reality. But, it’s simply not possible for a large corporation to innovate and grow rapidly without fully funded exceptional recruiting. 
• Yet with all this emphasis, recruiting remains their primary challenge – The CFO recently publicly revealed that even with its current high priority, recruiting maintains a primary challenge. When he noted, for example, in the package movement area, “The availability of workers is Amazon’s primary challenge .” Rather than resting on their laurels, they realize that they continuously need to get much better is a primary reason they continue to improve in recruiting. 
• Amazon’s size and growth are made possible by its excellence in recruiting – the prime limiting factor that restricts the company from maintaining its quantum growth rate is the ability to successfully recruit a huge volume of employees each year. And because Amazon employs about 1.4 million people globally , they have already done a high recruiting volume. The employee headcount makes them the US’s second-largest private employer (after Walmart). I predict that they will soon surpass Walmart for the #1 spot as the largest employer in the US. I would also note that Amazon has helped to reduce unemployment. Because of the 400,000 people they hired for their U.S. operations network, 45% were previously unemployed. Their new CEO, Andy Jassy, reinforced the importance of continuous growth through recruiting by announcing that he was planning to hire 55,000 people for corporate and technology roles globally during his first months. That’s close to all of Facebook’s current headcount and nearly 1/3 of Google’s headcount.
• Recruiting has made a major contribution to its stock value – businesswise, their recruiting and operational excellence have directly contributed to the corporation’s incredibly high stock valuation. Currently, Amazon is the fifth most valuable global company in market cap valuation, nearly 1.65 Trillion dollars. 
• Recruiting has made a major contribution toward having an extremely productive workforce – the average revenue generated by each employee last year was $353,000, which is an amazing ROI. HR helped maintain that productivity by increasing management prerogatives by remaining a 100% union-free workforce. 

————————————————-

Pillar #2.  A proven capability for handling a huge volume of recruiting across a broad range of positions and locations

Amazon recruiting has proven over the years that it has the capability of recruiting a huge number of new hires across many different job families and locations.

• Recruiting volume and capability are second to none – the fact that during 2021 Amazon’s recruiting increased headcount by a whopping 63%  in a single year. The largest percentage increase in headcount ever accomplished by any large employer during peacetime! This is but one startling indication of recruiting’s agility and capability to ramp up their recruiting capability dramatically. Amazon, of course, must have an exceptional recruiting capability because it is America’s second-largest employer (and I predict that it will soon surpass Walmart). The workload handled by their recruiting function is unparalleled because it has as many as 30,000 openings at a single time.
• Powerful Employer Brand means that everyone considers them – it is clear that because of its HR work, Amazon is recognized as an excellent place to work. And its rankings, notoriety, and exposure are major contributors to its recruiting success. Some of their notable recognitions include:
•  This year, LinkedIn’s top US employer ranking – Amazon ranked by the prestigious professional network LinkedIn as the #1 company where Americans want to work and develop their careers. 
• A global best employer also – this year and a ranking of global employers, Amazon was ranked #2 on the “World’s Best Employers” list by Forbes. 
• Fortune’s world’s most admired companies – this year, Amazon was ranked #2 on Fortune’s prestigious “World’s Most Admired Companies” list for the fifth year in a row. (After Apple). 
• BCG’s most innovative firms – this year, the Boston Consulting Group rated Amazon #3 on their “most innovative firms” list (after Apple and Alphabet). 
• Amazon is the best at attracting a record-breaking volume of applicants – as previously noted. In 2020 Amazon received a record-shattering 30 million applications , an all-time record. But it is especially impressive because it occurred when almost every major corporation and business struggled to get even a few applications for each job. The attractiveness of Amazon is illustrated by the fact that they received a breathtaking “ 1 Million Job Applications (in 1 day) ” as part of their 2021 annual Career Day event.
• Amazon has the capability of recruiting over an amazing range of jobs – companies like Google and Facebook have an easy recruiting job because they recruit mostly engineers. In comparison, Amazon must have the capability of recruiting everything from AI experts, pilots, book specialists, entertainment specialists, and cloud experts down to package handlers. In fact, Amazon can recruit across five extremely diverse business units (Amazon.com, AWS, Alexa, Whole Foods Market, and Amazon Prime) and 32 distinct technical groups. Their new Project Kuiper will even require them to hire rocket scientists as they attempt to launch satellites into orbit to widen their broadband access. In my view, their recruiting leaders deserve major kudos for developing their recruiting capability in so many completely different skill areas. And because they are a technology company, they rely heavily on technology throughout their recruiting function. 
• Amazon’s recruiting capability is truly global – because it is a worldwide e-commerce company, Amazon operates and recruits in 13 countries. In the US alone, it operates more than 930 facilities (including two headquarters locations). And last year, it received job applications from 170 different countries.

Pillar # 3. Fanatical Insistence On Quality Hires

Their third and most important pillar of recruiting excellence is their fanatical insistence on only hiring quality candidates. In comparison, few corporations spend the time defining and measuring the quality of hire (i.e., top-performing new hire). And only 36% even attempt to measure the quality of hire . Amazon ensures that they will get those quality hires using seven unique recruiting approaches. They include:

• Their goal is to be the “Earth’s Best Employer” – yes, Jeff Bezos’ stated, and only a little bit outrageous, goal is to make Amazon “ the world’s best employer . However, in my experience, it is a goal that they have already met. Executives, managers, HR professionals, and recruiters work together to reach it. In their words, they reach that goal because  “Their leaders work every day to create a safer, more productive, higher-performing, more diverse, and more just work environment. They lead with empathy, have fun at work, and make it easy for others to have fun. Leaders ask themselves: “Are my fellow employees growing?” “Are they empowered?” “Are they ready for what’s next?” “Leaders have a vision for and commitment to their employees’ personal success, whether that be at Amazon or elsewhere.”
• The Bezos approach to hiring is laser-focused on quality – their hiring managers and the recruiting function’s insistence on quality has remained solid throughout the years. I find that this fanatical insistence on quality is in direct contrast to the approach taken by most hiring managers at other corporations. During this candidate shortage, managers have been allowed in desperation “to fill butts in chairs.”

Amazon’s #1 advocate of hiring only quality employees is Jeff Bezos. He has shown his expectations in many often-repeated quotes, statements, and expectations. Including: 

• “It would be impossible to produce results in an environment as dynamic as the Internet without extraordinary people… Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been and will continue to be the single most important element of Amazon.com’s success.”
•  “If you can’t hire quality, don’t hire at all.” “I’d rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person.”
• “Don’t “settle for second best” when hiring. Instead, “Do what it takes to find the best people available.”
• “Every time we hire someone, he or she should raise the bar for the next hire so that the overall talent pool was always improving.” Bezos “ doesn’t care about an efficient hiring process .” “And he certainly “Doesn’t believe in making a hire, simply for the sake of filling an open role.”
• At Amazon, raising the bar means answering three questions for each candidate. First, “Will this person raise the average level of effectiveness of the group they’re entering?” Next, it asks, “Will you admire this person?” And last, it asks, “In what important area might this person be a superstar?” (In cases where they should be placed in a different job than they applied for). 
• Amazon utilizes “bar raisers” as its primary way to ensure quality – a key Amazon expectation for leaders – “Is to raise the Amazon’s use of “ bar raisers .” They get that name because their sole role is to ensure that each new hire will “raise the bar over the last incumbent” in each open job. The work during the interview process is to provide outside and neutral candidate assessments. To prevent a candidate from focusing on these individuals, they are anonymous to the candidate. These quality control individuals are from outside the team that is doing the hiring. And as a result, they are more likely to be critical because they don’t face the same “pressures to immediately fill the job” that hiring managers and teammates do. With this volunteer role, they accept the responsibility to literally “veto” any candidate they feel will not be a good fit for Amazon. Amazon’s new hires are quality employees because Amazon promoted more than 68,000 employees globally during 2020.
• Hiring is a unanimous team decision – a second method for ensuring that they only hire a quality candidate requires a unanimous team decision. One prominent former Amazon executive noted that Bezos “ Believes hiring should not only be a team effort. It should be a team decision.” So in most cases, “After final interviews, each member of the hiring team meets in a room to share their opinions on each candidate. And after a discussion, a vote takes place, and the results have to be unanimous for the person to be hired.” A single “no” vote would mean that the team will have to go back and search again for the ideal employee. 
• Amazon’s “unregretted turnover metric” helps fix hiring errors – Amazon assigns an “unregretted turnover metric” to its managers. It serves as an imperfect post-hire check on weak performing employees that somehow made it through their hiring process. This after-hiring double-check mirrors the approach that General Electric had under Jack Welch. Under this “regrettable turnover metric,” Managers at Amazon have a target rate for annual employee turnover. This means they are expected to lose a specified number of employees that they “ wouldn’t regret losing ” (i.e., below-average performing employees). Although this practice may appear harsh on the surface, it forces hiring managers to reassess each new hire periodically. 
• Paying employees to quit – this “Pay Employees to Quit” approach is a second post-hiring check on quality under this program (borrowed from Zappos). Amazon proactively offers incentives to unhappy recent hires during their first five years. The goal is to force unhappy recent hires to take a minute once each year to decide if they “really want to stay.” Based on the premise that keeping workers unsure of their commitment to Amazon will harm both the customers and the team. So if a worker decides that they don’t want to be here, they can get between $1000 and $5000 for walking away.
• Finally, improve new-hire quality by assessing candidates on Amazon’s leadership principles – one of the primary ways Amazon maintains quality hiring and fit. By assessing every candidate on Amazon’s published “leadership principles.” So each candidate at Amazon is expected to know and commit to following them ( these principles are posted on their jobs website ). As a result, everyone involved in hiring is expected to assess every candidate’s knowledge and commitment to these principles. At least 3 of these 15 principles relate directly to recruiting. Those three principles are below:
• Hire and develop the best – leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take their role in coaching others seriously. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice.
• Insist on the highest standards – leaders have relentlessly high standards. Many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders continually raise the bar and drive their teams to deliver high-quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed, so they stay fixed.
• Deliver results – leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle. 

If you’re interested in the 12 remaining leadership principles, click here . The remainder mostly focuses on key workforce capabilities, including customer obsession, innovation, learning, and ownership of problems.

Pillar #4. A scientific data-driven approach is the foundation for their success

During my assessment, I found that a primary reason why Amazon recruiting excels in so many different areas is that it operates under the umbrella of one of the most strategic HR functions. Their HR function is guided by 7 HR tenets , which are the guidelines that every HR function follows to “Maintain a Culture of Builders and Innovators. In my experience, shifting to a data-driven approach is required to maintain a culture in a large organization. Fortunately, Amazon is one of only a handful of HR functions (along with Google, Sodexo, and Nestlé Purina) that already makes decisions based on data and results metrics. Find that HR tenet in the box below. 

Every strategic recruiting function should know and follow three additional Amazon HR and leadership tenets. They are:

• Recruiting must focus on directly impacting business results – because BCG research revealed that “ recruiting has the highest impact on business results .” Therefore, it makes sense to follow and adhere to their HR tenet “We manage HR as a business.” Acting like a business starts with, rather than simply “aligning with business goals,” recruiting leaders purposely set recruiting goals and manage recruiting actions and resources to produce the maximum direct and measurable impact on business results. The next step is to reduce recruiting approaches that can’t demonstrate their business impact. And the final step is to convert recruiting problems and results into their dollar impact on corporate revenue (e.g., our recruiting efforts on sales jobs allowed us to maintain $232.5 million in sales revenue). Reporting recruiting results in dollars of revenue impact allow executives to quickly compare your dollar impacts to those from other HR and business functions.
• You must assume continuous obsolescence along with rapid learning – you should also follow another of Amazon’s HR tenets. Which is “Learn and Be Curious.” Because in an unpredictable world, you simply can’t prepare for most things. The secret to thriving is rapid continuous learning immediately as new problems and opportunities arrive. So the first step in a recruiting world where everything changes should be operating under the assumption that every current thing in recruiting will soon become obsolete. And, of course, you won’t be able to detect that obsolescence without collecting and applying performance data. Next, you must also continually be looking for a replacement for every current recruiting approach and tool. And that can only be accomplished by continuously learning about evolving business and recruiting approaches at other advanced companies. To identify the ones that might be applied to your recruiting situation. And finally, you won’t be able to determine if your new solutions are superior without following the tenet hypothesis testing covered in the next bullet point. 
• The utilization of hypothesis testing and experimentation – perhaps the most prominent difference between traditional and scientific recruiting is an insistence on hypothesis testing to discover what works and what doesn’t. The HR tenet is “ We form hypotheses about the best talent acquisition, talent retention, and talent development techniques and then set out to prove or disprove them with experiments and careful data collection.” For example, a split-sample experiment could prove or disprove the hypothesis that “Diverse interviewers select more diverse candidates” (They don’t). Google HR has also long been a supporter of hypothesis testing. An outrageous example of Amazon’s hypothesis testing occurred when their AWS group experimented by placing a job ad on the Tinder dating site.

Amazon Recruiting – A Case Study Of A Giant Among Children (Part 2 of 2 parts)

Today, every manager needs to learn great recruiting… and to find it, they need only follow Amazon!

The title of this case study includes the phrase “A Giant Among Children.” That’s just how large I found the differential between Amazon’s recruiting and the recruiting practices at most corporations. And if you take the time to read this case study, I am sure that you will agree with the sharp assessment. Of course, many managers already justifiably study Amazon because of its excellence in well-known areas, including customer service, supply chain, and cloud computing. However, most don’t realize that Amazon can only excel in so many divergent business areas because it is “a recruiting machine .” It recruits effortlessly even during our current talent shortage when most others starved for applicants. This case study is designed to show you their best practices and what makes them “a recruiting giant among children.” 

Pillar #5. Amazon’s amazing array of targeted recruiting programs

In my view, the most surprising of all of Amazon’s 6 pillars of excellence is their willingness to develop and offer numerous individual recruiting and career transition programs that are “customized” to the needs of distinct groups of candidates and employees. Targeting subprograms is essential because different groups are attracted and motivated by different offerings. At Amazon, they specifically target a wide array of people, including diverse women, veterans, the elderly, and those that need internal movement or an upward push. Unfortunately, space limitations prevent me from highlighting all of the amazing, targeted programs in operation at Amazon. However, you will find a representative sample of 14 of their exceptional targeted recruiting programs below. The programs that likely have the largest impact appear first on the list.

• The Returnship program helps the unemployed reenter the workforce – The Returnship is a reentry program designed to help the underemployed and those who have been out of the workforce for at least a year (usually due to unemployment, children staying at home, or Covid concerns). This program aims to provide this target group with a rare opportunity to restart their careers by joining Amazon. At the beginning of the program, “returners” work on a specific project. And after four months, they have earned the possibility to move into full-time positions at Amazon. During those four months, participants work remotely from home. If they need it, they provide child and elder care assistance. So they can ease back into the workforce without making any major life changes while they are in this program. And when they accept a permanent role, Amazon will also pay for their relocation if needed. Since their Returnship pilot initiative in January of 2021, Amazon reports that the program has enrolled more than 60 people, and 95% of them received an offer for a full-time role at Amazon. In the future, Amazon has stated that they plan to hire 1,000 professionals into the program during the coming years in roles ranging from finance to engineering.
• The Best Fit Program makes it easier for software engineers to find their perfect job – this best fit program is an accelerated job identification program. Designed specifically to help software engineers that are applying find their perfect job fit among all relevant Amazon jobs. This program helps make their job search at Amazon quicker and more accurate. Those in the program can avoid putting in the traditional multiple hours of searching for their right job. It allows these software engineers to apply once and then be automatically considered for thousands of relevant jobs across the company. A combination of electronic and human matching approaches finds the jobs that fit their preferences during the first step. For their ideal kind of team and their desired working style. But the program will still recommend jobs in new areas in which Amazon thinks they would also be successful. During the last part of the process, applicants get to meet all of the hiring managers for each of the recommended jobs. And finally, they get to choose their first job at Amazon.
• The Career Choice Program supports employees who want a college degree – support for getting a college degree or GED is a major attraction factor. One of the goals of this Career Choice educational opportunity program is to help lower-level Amazon employees transition into more lucrative paying and high-demand fields (and perhaps even leaving Amazon). For eligible employees, Amazon will now pay 100% of its employee’s college tuition and fees for earning a diploma or certificate in a qualified field of study at eligible schools. Recently the program has been updated to allow more flexibility.
• The UX Apprenticeship – It encourages development in research and design – Amazon’s User Experience Design and Research Apprenticeship program provide a combination of instructor-led training and real-world experience in a one-year program. It offers employees the opportunity to learn and develop research and design skills on Amazon teams, including Prime Video, Alexa, AWS, and Amazon Fashion. Apprenticeship graduates can move into jobs that help improve the experience of Amazon customers, from making payments easier on Amazon sites to designing features that make devices more accessible.
• Surge2IT – Proactively encourages career advancement in IT – their Surge2IT program is another career transition program designed to help entry-level IT employees across Amazon’s operations network. It focuses on IT employees who don’t possess a software development degree. After completing this program, they can become software development engineers after about nine months. This program allows lower-level IT employees to pursue careers in higher-paying technical roles through this self-paced learning resource. The course helps employees develop the skills necessary to advance their careers in the information technology field. Participants who complete this course and move up at Amazon can make up to an additional $10,000 a year.
• The Amazon Technical Academy makes you a software developer in nine months – this career transition program requires nothing more than an interest in software development. It started as an experiment, and since then, it has successfully enrolled hundreds of employees. Amazon Technical Academy builds on their initial interest by training them in the essential skills needed to transition to an entry-level software developer engineer role at Amazon. The program is free for their employees. And it requires a high school diploma or GED. And the fortitude to get through a rigorous nine-month, full-time program that expert Amazon software engineers created.
• The Mechatronics program prepares employees for robot maintenance jobs – under this career transition program in robotic repair . It is designed for employees interested in learning engineering and mechanical skills necessary to repair and maintain the equipment and robots inside Amazon facilities. Those that are accepted get the opportunity to go back to school for a free 12-week course. After that, employees begin a year of on-the-job learning under a technical maintenance specialist. After completing this final step, employees who now have these highly sought-after skills are eligible for a full-time role as a mechatronics and robotics technician, which may increase their paycheck by up to 40%.
• Project Juno – aids in relocating current employees – this internal movement program helps out when a current employee must relocate. After they have decided that they must move, this Amazon job finding process electronically finds the relocating employee the same or a similar job available at the Amazon facility in their new city.
• CamperForce – This Program offers jobs to traveling seasonal workers – CamperForce offers jobs for those who travel in RVs and work along the way. They are known as Work Campers. And because Amazon especially needs people to work in its warehouses during the holidays. They now encourage and hire seasonal help that live in a trailer or RV. In addition to welcoming them, Amazon pays them a small monthly stipend to live in their own trailer at an RV facility close to an Amazon warehouse site where they will work.
• The Military Spouses Program –  provides jobs for military spouses – the goal is to find jobs for the spouses of Amazon’s 45,000 veteran and military employees. Designed to find military spouses an appropriate job at Amazon. Either for the first time or when he or she must relocate along with their military spouse. In addition, Amazon recently pledged to hire over 100,000 U.S. veterans and military spouses by 2024, further building on their commitment to military families. 
• Amazon Warriors – provides support for transitioning veterans – this veterans support program is designed to help recent veterans transition into Amazon’s workforce. It helps by offering a professional network of Amazon employees that are veterans. It also provides a mechanism for community outreach.
• People with disabilities – They have their own targeted website – Amazon offers a targeted site specifically to meet the needs of applicants with disabilities. The site also educates them on how to take the best advantage of what Amazon has to offer applicants and employees with disabilities.
• Amazon hires felons – Amazon has no blanket policy against hiring felons. In fact, they are open to hiring them into seasonal jobs. Depending on the type of felony, time since they fulfilled their sentence, and the corrective actions completed, however, after successfully completing that initial assignment and based on their performance. The felon may then be considered for a more permanent position. 
• Amazon employee referrals – like most large corporations, Amazon has a formal referral program. Unfortunately, I only rate it as a little better-than-average because only 11% of those interviewed are employee referrals . And they pay a range of bonuses up to $5000 for a referral that is hired .

Pillar #6. Unique elements in their “one-size-fits-one” agile hiring process

I have discovered 7 unique hiring process elements that contribute to making Amazon’s hiring process highly agile, flexible, and adaptable. These seldom found elsewhere elements make it possible for their hiring process to adapt to the recruiting needs of every Amazon business unit and location. Those unique elements include:

• By design, their hiring process flexes to fit every unique job – they hire in so many global locations and across so many jobs from pilot to janitor. Their candidate assessment process must be modifiable to fit the unique assessment requirements for each job family. We call this capability “one-size-fits-all one.” Of course, the hiring process includes the basic elements for all jobs, including the standard ATS/recruiter resume screen, a phone screen, and at least one structured remote or live behavioral interview. Some portion of that interview will be devoted to assessing the candidate’s understanding of Amazon’s culture through its leadership principles .  However, the interviews will likely last all day for most professional jobs. Often it will include an online test and a verbally presented work sample or problem to complete. The candidate may also be asked to write up an idea in a press release format (because that’s the way ideas are presented at Amazon). Or, developers may be required to participate in a virtual or in-person interactive whiteboard exercise for developer jobs where they have the candidate walk them through the steps they would take to solve a current software problem. In the end, the team will always make the final hiring decision, and the “bar raiser” gatekeeper will have the option of vetoing that choice.
• To increase innovation, Amazon specifically targets problem-solving skills – one thing that is common across all business units at Amazon is the need for innovation. And as a result, Amazon targets candidates that thrive at solving a never-ending queue of complex problems. They consider a spirit of innovation part of their DNA at Amazon. They clearly state upfront that they are looking for “analytical and critical thinkers with great judgment, who can both think big and roll up their sleeves to solve hard problems on behalf of our customers.” 
• Amazon increases its applications by removing the mystery from its hiring process – many firms talk about their “candidate experience.” However, I have found that applying for a job at most firms is a long way from being user-friendly. We know this because the number one complaint from applicants is almost always that the hiring process that they are about to face “is a complete mystery.” Amazon, instead, leads the way ( along with J&J ) in removing the mystery out of what the candidate can expect during their hiring process. They offer an extensive array of numerous free resources that guide applicants ( our hiring process website ) to meet this goal. It highlights what any candidate can expect from the day they apply until they begin work. In addition, they also offer suggestions on the best interviewing practices for its candidates to follow on its YouTube channel and its LinkedIn feed . They also make it clear that serious candidates must study the company’s leadership principles mentioned earlier. Finally, they help applicants understand the different teams they can work in. By providing them with a list of the 32 possible teams , a description of what they do, and how many open jobs are currently open in each team. They even have a “best-fit program” that uses artificial intelligence to help software engineers find their perfect job within Amazon.
• Amazon holds a national Career Day event like no other – many firms, including McDonald’s and Walmart, hold “national hiring days.” However, I find that they pale in comparison to Amazon’s. They call their unique Career Day “America’s biggest training and recruiting event.” It actually is unique because it goes well beyond the typical job fair. In addition to displaying open jobs, it offers remote personalized career coaching sessions and even some tactical training. It further provides candid advice on how job seekers can start, build, or transition their careers at Amazon. Last year, they received 1 million applications for their Career Day event.
• Amazon relies heavily on seasonal workers as a talent pipeline source – research has shown that often the new hire has the highest probability of success. Someone that has recently successfully served as a temp, intern, or contractor at the organization. Amazon takes advantage of this high-quality source by hiring well over 100k seasonal workers each year. In addition to filling their seasonal need, the seasonal workforce serves as an effective screening process for determining which seasonal workers should be offered a full-time job. It also gives the worker a chance to determine if they really want to work at Amazon.
• They use FC brand ambassadors to improve their brand proactively – I’ve never seen this done before. But, to counter the massive amounts of negative Twitter messaging found about working at their warehouses. Amazon has asked long-term employees at its fulfillment centers to act as brand ambassadors in an extraordinary move to improve their online employment branding. They don’t get extra pay, but they get $50 gift cards as a small reward for tweeting positive things about working in their warehouses.
• A shift in emphasis to remote and broader college recruiting – makes college recruiting more effective, diverse, and remote. Amazon is curtailing some campus visits and heavily emphasizing virtual student meetings. It has also broadened its reach to many more campuses to get added diversity to the point where for example, last year, it extended offers to students from 80 M.B.A. programs (instead of exclusively going to a few elite schools).

Amazon Utilizes Data To Identify The Most Powerful Attraction Factors

Rather than assuming that applicant attraction factors stay the same in a fast-changing world. A critical part of Amazon’s highly agile and adaptable recruiting process is continually gathering data to update “the most effective attraction factors” for their targeted potential applicants. Here are 8 examples of how they identify the attraction factors and the current ones.

• They start by using data to identify the most current attraction factors – most corporations simply guess at them or assume that they are the same as last year. In comparison, Amazon uses data to identify its current attraction factors. At Amazon, these attraction factors currently fit into four categories. Each of the four is emphasized on their main career website . The four primary attraction categories include benefits , career advancement , work/life balance, and culture . As part of their data-driven approach, they continually survey new hires to determine the general and the specific factors that actually attracted them to Amazon. And last year, 93% of their new hires cited Amazon’s Career Skills and Upskilling training program s as their top attraction factor. As a follow-up, Amazon is investing $700 million in upskilling 100,000 employees in the U.S. by 2025.
• They proactively encourage work/life balance – although some may argue about their level of success. Amazon boldly lists work/life balance as one of its four primary attraction categories. And on its work/life balance website , it describes how Amazon strives to help its employees reach that balance.
• Amazon is acting to reduce applicant health and injury concerns – during the pandemic. Amazon has focused on reducing Covid risks and workplace injuries as roadblocks that reduce potential warehouse applicants. So in that light, Amazon is currently developing a new automated staff schedule process. It reduces the risk of injury by utilizing computer algorithms to rotate employees between jobs when completed. A more frequent rotation is needed because their data reveals that roughly 40% of their work-related fulfillment center injuries are due to sprains and strains caused by repetitive motions. 
• Higher base pay – Amazon was one of the first companies to realize that they needed to raise employee pay and its hourly jobs in a tight U.S. job market. So Amazon’s average starting wage is now over $18 per hour, with an additional $3 depending on their shift.
• Sign-on bonuses – like many companies, Amazon has begun offering significant sign-on bonuses at some of their fulfillment centers (up to $4000).
• Being dog friendly is surprisingly an attraction factor – in work areas where it is safe. Amazon is one of the few companies that actively encourage dogs in the office. And because of their efforts, Amazon was listed as the #1 dog-friendly company in the US by Rover.com . Their leadership has noted that “Amazon has found that dogs in the office actually contribute to their collaborative company culture.” 
• They stopped testing applicants for cannabis –   in many states recreational or medical cannabis use is now legal. Amazon has been a leader in announcing that it will no longer screen finalist candidates for marijuana use. In part because this testing was unnecessarily reducing their candidate pool. But Amazon went one step further. It alerted its independent delivery service partners that if they too stopped testing for marijuana during their application process and prominently advertised that fact. They could boost their own business’s job applications by up to 400%.
• They offer anytime pay – this last attraction factor may not seem like much. However, it has proved to be an attraction factor for the many hourly workers that live paycheck to paycheck. Amazon’s free fast pay program offers the option, in some jobs, for eligible employees to receive 70% of their eligible earned pay whenever they choose (24×7).

Of course, Amazon is working on its weak points

Amazon is still far from perfect in areas other than recruiting despite all its efforts. Despite its ranking by LinkedIn as the #1 employer. They still receive relentless criticism because of their corporation’s size, speed of innovation, impact on small businesses, their percentage of diversity, and the waste they produce. Even some innovators criticize them for excessively keeping some innovative projects secret from other internal teams (just like Apple). 

In management, they have also received volumes of criticism, especially because of their anti-union stance and their common practice of continually replacing “human jobs” with robots. The media revealed that they once selected which workers to release using an algorithm, and they subsequently fired them via email. Its managers have been criticized for not telling their employees when placed under a performance management plan. They are also well-known for their fast-paced work environment that some argue can lead to excess injuries and employee burnout. And as a result of that work stress, in some cases, they have had to pay “show up bonuses” to reduce their sometimes-rampant warehouse absenteeism. Finally, as most great firms do, they have a relatively high employee turnover rate. This can be partly explained because they are constantly under attack by their competitor’s recruiters, who are logically targeting their exceptional talent. 

Final Thoughts

Today when I am asked by those beginning their career where they should work, I, without hesitation, say Amazon. It is primarily an innovation machine that dominates in so many different product areas and across so many industries. In the same light, if you are a recruiting leader, your goal is to lead your industry in recruiting and HR eventually. It’s time to realize that you must focus your best practice research exclusively on Amazon. You can learn so much so fast (Note: the previous recruiting leader, Google, has lost its luster since Laszlo left).

If you’re interested in past case studies by Dr. Sullivan 

The initial landing pages for Dr. Sullivan’s previous case studies on Google, Apple, and Facebook can be found on his www.drjohnsullivan.com website by clicking here . You can go directly to the introductory part of his four-part Apple case study by clicking here . The first part of his Google recruiting case study can be found here . Part 1 of his Facebook case study can be found here .

Author’s Note  

• Please share these best practices by sending this case study to your team and network or sharing it on social media. 
• Next, if you don’t already subscribe to Dr. Sullivan’s weekly Talent Newsletter, you can do that here .
• Also, join the well over 11,000 that have followed or connected with Dr. Sullivan’s community on LinkedIn . 

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About Dr John Sullivan

Hire More Employed Candidates… By Raising Doubts About Their Current Job (The power of “doubt raising”)

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Using candidate feedback for recruiter reviews and managing recruiters is fast becoming standard practice these days. In fact MOST Survale clients use some form of candidate and/or hiring manager feedback in quarterly or annual recruiter reviews, incentive compensation or other systems for managing recruiters ’ performance.

A Real Life Example: The Benefits of Recruiting Chatbots

SelectSoftware

APRIL 28, 2020

If you’re looking to save time with your recruiting efforts, check out this case study .

Best recruitment marketing blogs of the year by Stories Inc.

DECEMBER 22, 2020

At the start of 2020, we focused on providing for you the best recruitment marketing blogs possible. All in all, we hit “publish” over 100 times this year— including virtual content creation resources , a COVID-19 hub , case studies , downloadables , and original articles. Crisis communications for recruitment marketers.

Improving Diversity Recruiting Strategy: 7 Practical Tips

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

People say that using a diversity recruitment strategy is the right thing to do. This post is here for companies that need to improve their diversity recruiting strategy and take advantage of these benefits. By the time you’re done reading, you’ll know what it takes to recruit top diverse talent and retain them effectively.

Talent Mobility Webinar: How to Recruit and Retain Internal Talent

NOVEMBER 7, 2016

Recruiting : instead of immediately looking externally for talent, you consider your internal talent inventory to determine if you have someone you can move into the role. Each case study tells a slightly different story, and I’m excited to share those examples . It has a whole host of impacts and benefits.

#GamifyHR HR / Learning Gamification Case Studies

Strategic HCM

MAY 18, 2014

Day 3 of Fleming''s Gamification in HR Summit focused on learning, particularly in this case study from Tuba Surucu from Yapi Kredi Bank in Turkey. So again, this is gaming rather than gamification - and quite similar to the recruitment case studies in fact.

#E4S case studies - BT, Capital One.

DECEMBER 17, 2012

But after a couple of these I was beginning to worry whether these case study sessions were going to live up to the challenge that E4S provides and David Guest described earlier - if there’s been such as huge management c**k-up as there certainly has, we don’t get out of it by a slight shift in management as usual.

Case Study Underscores Why HR Change Management Skills Are Critical

HR Daily Advisor

DECEMBER 8, 2017

Here is an example to illustrate the point: This is a true story about Robert, a director of Recruitment and Human Development for a major chemical company. Improve the company’s college recruiting program designed to bring into the company “high potential” entry-level engineers and technically-trained individuals.

Organizations Can Use Assessments to Bridge the Skills Gap

SEPTEMBER 5, 2017

According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) report “ The New Talent Landscape: Recruiting Difficulty and Skills Shortages ”, 68 percent of HR professionals are having trouble recruiting candidates for full-time positions. Organizations Can Use a 3-Strategy Approach to Recruitment . Enjoy the post!).

How an Employee Experience Platform Helps with Recruiting

DECEMBER 14, 2017

Case in point: recruiting . How an employee experience platform helps recruiting . That means it touches everything in the employee lifecycle, from recruiting to retirement. With more time and data on hand, HR professionals can optimize their efforts around programs such as recruiting . About Kazoo.

Case Study: HR as a Vital Catalyst for Company Success

SEPTEMBER 19, 2017

HR effectively redefined the recruiting and selection process to hire people who would embrace the 20 percent, aided in creating incentives aligned with the 20 percent purpose, and built a performance review process designed to reward and recognize efforts and contributions focused on achieving the it.

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This is not me

What Is Employer Branding and How To Build It

Katherine McDermott - Guest Contributor

Importance of employer branding

Employer branding strategy.

• Software to help your employer brand strategy

An employer brand is the key to attracting candidates and retaining employees.

As a small business leader or communications professional, you're probably familiar with the importance of a strong brand strategy that grows revenue and improves customer retention. But what about an employer brand to attract top talent?

Many small businesses need help to hire and retain talented individuals—especially for competitive, specialized roles—and having an employer brand in place is the key to attracting and retaining top talent. 

In this article, we'll discuss the importance of an employer branding strategy and its role in your recruitment process.

What is employer branding?

Employer branding is the reputation you have among current employees, potential workers, and the overall industry. It's the image your organization cultivates and maintains and is directly related to your company culture, values, work environment, employee benefits, and more.

For small to midsize businesses, employer branding is an opportunity to craft a distinct, memorable place in the minds of your employees and potential talent. A strong employer brand allows smaller businesses to compete for top talent because employees are attracted to their positive work environment, culture, and work-life balance.

Even with fewer resources, small businesses can effectively communicate their unique value and benefits, helping them attract and retain top talent and drive their overall success in the market.

The benefits of employer branding are numerous—from increased productivity to cost savings to increased retention; employer branding focuses on your company's mission, vision, values, and culture. A well–formulated employer brand helps you stand out in the talent pool, encouraging high-quality applicants and, eventually, top-performing employees.

Increased retention

A strong employee brand helps foster employee engagement , allowing employees to become your company's best advocates. According to Capterra's 2024 Collaboration and Productivity Survey, 79% of respondents agree that their organization's culture directly affects the way they do their work. * Building an attractive culture is a popular perk for potential job seekers.

Improved recruitment

Attracting top candidates is critical, and a strong employer brand makes your business appealing to job seekers. It also allows your business to stay at the top of people's minds, so when individuals start their job search, they immediately see if your business is hiring. This gives you an edge over other businesses in the recruitment process .

Strong competitive advantage

A strong employer branding strategy allows you to stand out over larger companies with more resources and your competitors. You want to be well-known for a work culture that fosters growth and development while maintaining a positive environment. Not only does this help attract top talent that will propel your business forward, but it also offers an element of cost savings, increased productivity, and more.

Now, it's time to work through building your employer branding strategy. Start by defining your company's unique value offering, conduct a brand audit, and formalize your employee value proposition. Then, it's time to create a distribution strategy to share your employer branding with current and future employees.

Define your unique value proposition

An employer value proposition identifies your strategic direction and outlines the benefits you offer employees. It's a distinct component of your recruiting strategy and embodies how you want to be perceived by employees. Consider your company values and what you hold dear; for example, these could be a commitment to long–term professional development, inclusivity, excellence, and other values.

Conduct an employer brand audit

To begin, consider what is on your careers page on your website and external job sites. Analyze what your company is posting about on social media, your company blog, and other outlets. It's also helpful to survey employees about their impressions of your employer brand. This will give you a strong baseline of what already exists and how current employees perceive your employer brand.

Create your employee value proposition

According to Gartner, a misaligned employer brand and the company’s overall brand can start to detract from your hiring and recruiting efforts and create confusion in the minds of employees and job seekers. [ 1 ] This is the unique offering to employees in return for their experience, skills, and time and is a key component of bringing what employees want to them. Utilize your employee value proposition to guide your internal efforts, align the team, and enhance your distribution strategy.

Execute your employee branding strategy

This is where you can get creative and leverage different channels like recruitment websites, your company website, your blog, social media, and more. You can also work your employer brand into a larger part of your content marketing strategy, utilizing video interviews with employees, blog posts, and social media content to show what working for your company is like.

Your career page is an excellent place to highlight your employer brand, company values, perks and activities, and open roles. You can also introduce your employer brand to your onboarding process for new employees. On social media, experiment with employee takeovers, allowing future job seekers to see different departments and their day-to-day lives and responsibilities.

/ CASE STUDY

Employer branding examples.

Duolingo: During the rise of TikTok, Duolingo, a learning language app, created a character and mascot to interact with its audience on social media. The owl mascot makes jokes, interacts with employees at the office, and showcases what it's like to work at Duolingo. The funny, lighthearted character embodied the employer brand and gained massive popularity on TikTok with 8 million followers.

Google: Another top employer brand is Google. A long-standing history of a positive work environment, great employee perks, and passionate employees make Google a distinct employer brand in the minds of job seekers. Self–proclaimed "Googlers" are open to advocating for the brand and sharing videos and clips of what it's like to work at Google on social media.

Once Upon a Farm: A consumer food brand, Once Upon a Farm, is a baby and kid's food company created by actress Jennifer Garner. Employees frequently share clips and videos of working at the brand on social media, and they're passionate about their company's mission. On its website, Once Upon a Farm also showcases its parental perks like extended leave, emphasizing its commitment to family.

Software to help your employer brand strategy 

In Capterra's 2023 Brand Monitoring Survey, 67% of respondents say their company uses brand reputation management software, and 69% say their company uses brand reputation management services. *

Reputation management software can help make your employer brand audit process more streamlined. These platforms help monitor, manage, and respond to customers and external audience members, allowing you to humanize your employer brand. You can also aggregate content, feedback, comments, and engagement to understand what your audience says about you online. 

Improve your employer brand, increase your retention and attract talent

For small businesses, a robust and recognizable employer brand can be one of the biggest competitive advantages in recruitment and retention.

To start building your unique employer branding strategy, define your value proposition, conduct a brand audit, and execute your employee branding strategy by leveraging current employees, online reviews, video and blog content, and more.

Employer branding is paramount in competitive industries and job markets, and it's a unique opportunity for your business to improve retention and attract top talent.

For a deeper dive into employer branding strategy, check out the related resources below:

Staffing Agencies

Branding Agencies

Recruitment Marketing Platforms Software

Employee Engagement Software

* Capterra's 2024 Collaboration and Productivity Survey was conducted online in January 2024 among 6490 respondents in the U.S. (n=503), U.K. (n=496), Canada (n=499), Netherlands (n=498), Brazil (n=501), India (n=500), France (n=497), Spain (n=501), Germany (n=497), Italy (n=500), Mexico (n=500), Australia (n=500), and Japan (n=498). The goal of the study was to learn about the challenges workers face collaborating remotely across countries. Respondents were screened for employment at companies that offer either hybrid or fully remote work styles.

**Capterra's 2023 Brand Monitoring Survey was conducted in February 2023 among 299 U.S. respondents to learn about company brand reputation or monitoring practices, needs, and challenges. Respondents were screened to have marketing, advertising, communications, or PR job roles or functions and include respondents that work for companies that practice and do not practice brand monitoring tactics/strategies.

Ignition Guide to Building an Employer Brand Messaging Strategy , Gartner

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About the author.

Katherine McDermott is a product marketing expert in B2B technology and SaaS.

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• Open access
• Published: 01 April 2024

Workforce strategies during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic: a retrospective online survey at intensive care units in Germany

• Lara C. Stroth 1 ,
• Franziska Jahns 1 ,
• Berit Bode 1 ,
• Maike Stender 1 ,
• Michelle Schmidt 2 , 3 ,
• Heiko Baschnegger 4 ,
• Nurith Epstein 5 ,
• Benedikt Sandmeyer 4 &
• Carla Nau 1  

BMC Health Services Research volume  24 , Article number:  407 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

As the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe at the beginning of 2020, healthcare systems were forced to rapidly adapt and expand to meet the sudden surge in demand for intensive care services. This study is the first systematic analysis of the strategies employed by German hospitals to recruit personnel and expand bed capacities during the first wave of the pandemic, and to evaluate the effectiveness of those recruitment measures.

152 German hospitals with intensive care capacities were selected and invited to participate in an online-based retrospective survey. Factors like the geographic distribution, individual COVID burden and level of care were considered for inclusion in the sample. The data were analyzed descriptively.

A total of 41 hospitals participated in the survey. The additional demand for intensive care beds was met primarily by activating intensive care beds that were previously considered as non-operational in existing intensive care units (81% of respondents) and by upgrading recovery rooms (73%). The physician staffing requirements were met at approximately 75%, while the nursing staffing requirements were only met by about 45%. Staffing needs were met through reallocations/transfers (85%), staff recruitment from parental leave or retirement (49%), increased hours worked by internal staff (49%), new staff hiring (44%) and increased use of temporary staff (32%). Staff reallocations/transfers to critical care within a hospital were rated as the most effective measure. In this context, specialized personnel mostly from anesthesiology departments were appointed to intensive care medicine.

Conclusions

Despite multiple recruitment efforts, the pandemic has exacerbated the nursing staff shortage. The reallocation of existing staff within hospitals was a key element in covering the staffing needs. However, additional measures and efforts are required in order to ensure that critically ill patients can be cared for without compromise. The results of this study may have important implications for healthcare providers and policymakers, offering an evidence-based foundation for responding to future public health emergencies with agility, efficiency, and success.

Peer Review reports

The COVID-19 pandemic posed substantial challenges to the world and Germany in early 2020. Expanding intensive care capacities and recruiting additional staff were two key issues for hospitals in coping with the crisis.

In Germany, the first case of a SARS-CoV-2 infection was reported at the end of January 2020 [ 1 ]. The first larger outbreaks then occurred as a result of local festivities (e.g., carnival) in mid-February, resulting in increased numbers of cases in individual counties (e.g., Heinsberg) and initiating the onset of the first COVID-19 wave (calendar week 10/2020–20/2020) [ 2 ]. As a result of the infection incidence worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a pandemic on March 11, 2020.

In view of the expected increase in the number of infections, there was an urgent need to expand technical and personnel intensive care capacities as quickly as possible. The present study seeks to determine the strategies that were used in German hospitals and to rate their effectiveness.

Due to the dynamics of the infectious event and the novel disease that hospitals were confronted with, the first wave is to be considered as particularly critical and required hospitals to quickly and constantly adjust their resources. The pandemic had a severe impact on staff capacities in all German hospitals and necessitated the mobilization of additional medical and nursing staff on a short-term (and temporary) basis to ensure/maintain the care of critically ill patients. This was particularly challenging due to the shortage of nursing staff that existed even before the pandemic. Approximately 28,000 specialists (2019) in geriatric, health and nursing care were lacking [ 3 ]. In intensive care, 53% of hospitals reported to have staffing problems (as of fall 2016), with an average of 4.7 full-time positions not being filled [ 4 ]. A total of 3,150 full-time positions in intensive care remained vacant nationwide with an increasing tendency. Hospitals with staffing problems in the medical service of their intensive care units (ICUs) (29%) had a mean of 1.7 full-time positions vacant. Understaffing of nursing staff in ICUs can have serious consequences for patient care and is associated with an increased risk of mortality, hospital-related infections and pressure wounds [ 5 , 6 ]. Due to lack of child care, staff’s own illness, or quarantine, the pandemic led to additional staff absences. Consequently, alternative concepts for staff recruitment (and training) needed to be developed.

In the context of extending intensive care capacities, the Federal Ministry of Health addressed hospitals in an open letter on March 13, 2020, asking them to recruit additional staff. It also appealed to postpone scheduled surgeries and interventions to build up additional provisional bed and treatment capacities [ 7 ]. At the same time, hospitals were assured of financial compensation for the resulting additional economic burden. In addition, a bonus was introduced for each additional intensive care bed provisionally placed or kept available. The relevant legal framework for this was laid down in the COVID-19 Hospital Relief Act ( COVID-19-Krankenhausentlastungsgesetz ), which came into force on March 27, 2020. Even before the pandemic, Germany had a very high density by international standards, with 33.9 intensive care beds per 100,000 inhabitants [ 8 ]. Capacities were significantly lower, for example, in Spain and Italy, which were severely affected at the beginning of the pandemic, with 9.7 and 8.6 per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively. In addition to measures to cushion the economic consequences, regulations were also enacted that allowed hospitals a greater scope of action in workforce planning, such as the suspension of the Nursing Staff Lower Limit Ordinance ( Pflegepersonaluntergrenzen-Verordnung, PpUGV ) [ 9 ] and the relaxation of the Working Hours Act for certain sectors with the introduction of the COVID-19 Working Hours Ordinance ( COVID-19 Arbeitszeitverordnung, COVID-19-ArbZV ) [ 10 ].

As a result of the acute information demand on the hospitals’ management of COVID-19, the WHO Regional Office for Europe and the German Society of Hospital Disaster Response Planning and Crisis Management ( Deutsche Arbeitsgemeinschaft Krankenhaus Einsatzplanung, DAKEP ), among others, published comprehensive recommendations to support hospitals in the preparation and adjustment of emergency plans [ 11 , 12 ]. Two recent cross-country comparisons of European countries, for example, show that all states used a variety of measures to create sufficient physical infrastructure and to increase workforce surge capacity at the beginning of the pandemic [ 13 , 14 ]. All countries designated COVID-19 units and expanded hospital and surge capacities by setting-up additional acute and ICU beds within existing facilities [ 13 ]. In addition, Germany established a nationwide intensive care bed registry [ 15 ] and carried out inter-hospital transport of COVID-19 patients, including patient uptakes from abroad [ 13 , 16 ]. With respect to the recruitment of additional staff, common strategies of countries were to augment the capacity of available health workers and the recruitment of medical and nursing students [ 14 ]. For Germany, redeployment of personnel who have already retired, initiatives for trained foreign personnel and calls for volunteers were also described. The cross-country comparisons mentioned here report individual measures with reference to country examples but do not provide an overall view of the countries in detail. Site-specific studies for Germany are rare thus far. The only published study in this context by Köppen et al. [ 17 ] analyzed pandemic preparedness planning and action at the federal and state level in Germany and found that measures to expand workforce capacity varied widely among the states. The analyses were based on data from websites of the German Federal and State Ministries for Health and of public health facilities. As with the cross-country comparisons, there is a lack of an overall overview here as well. In addition, we are not aware of any study that provides information on the extent to which measures described were actually applied and how their effectiveness was assessed.

In this study, we therefore systematically evaluated local concepts for expansion for intensive care bed capacity and staff recruitment during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany based on individual first-hand responses from hospitals themselves. The aims of our study were (1) to gain an overview of staffing in intensive care as well as the instruments/measures that were used to meet the increased staffing requirement during the first wave of the pandemic and (2) to assess how effective these strategies were perceived in practice, in order (3) to derive recommendations for future pandemics or crisis.

The survey on recruitment was part of the nationwide survey study “ICU-Response”, which used a cross-sectional design and aimed to systematically assess local approaches to staff recruitment, training and safety management in the context of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. This publication concentrates on the analysis of recruitment strategies; the results on training and safety management are reported elsewhere (e.g., [ 18 ]). ICU-Response was conducted as part of the national collaborative project egePan Unimed “Development, Testing and Implementation of regionally adaptive health care structures and processes for pandemic management guided by evidence and led by university clinics” in the University Medicine Network ( Netzwerk Universitätsmedizin, NUM ).

The study was approved by the Ethics Committee (EK 459/20) of the University Hospital RWTH Aachen.

The national intensive care register of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine ( Deutsche Interdisziplinäre Vereinigung für Intensiv- und Notfallmedizin, DIVI ; www.intensivregister.de ) was used to identify all hospitals with intensive care capacities in Germany (> 1,200). Of those, a representative sample of 152 hospitals in total was formed. At first, an equal number of hospitals was selected from three regions (50 North, 48 Central, 54 South), each representing about one third of the nation’s population. While the North included the federal states of Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, Brandenburg, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, the central region comprised Thuringia, Hesse and North-Rhine Westphalia. The federal states of Bavaria, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland belonged to the southern region.

Then, the hospitals’ level of care and COVID-19 burden were taken into consideration: Hospitals in Germany are assigned to different levels of care according to their specialization and the services they offer [ 19 ]. Depending on the federal state, three or four levels are distinguished. We attempted to map the proportions of hospital types and included 41 university hospitals or tertiary care hospitals, 40 secondary care hospitals, and 71 primary or basic care hospitals/hospitals with narrow specialization. To identify different levels of COVID-19 patient load, registry data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for the period from January 1 to June 30, 2020, which were made available upon request, were used. Based on these, hospitals were grouped into hospitals with low (0–19), medium (20–59), or high (≥ 60) COVID-19 ICU patient burden. As hospitals with a high volume of COVID-19 patients ( N  = 52) were of particular interest, all of them were included in the survey without exception. The sample was supplemented by 49 hospitals with medium and 51 hospitals with low COVID-19 patient volumes.

Online survey

The hospitals selected were invited to participate in the ICU-Response Survey via email with a personal letter in late March/early April 2021. They were asked to provide the name of a central contact person from their hospital’s critical care department for further correspondence. The central contacts were then contacted by email, provided with the questionnaire on recruitment for preview and asked to complete it online via SoSci Survey [ 20 , 21 ]. Hospitals that had not responded after the initial invitation were reminded by email and/or contacted via telephone. Data collection was conducted between March 24 and June 20, 2021.

Outcome parameters / study variables

The questionnaire was developed purely empirically by the authors based on their COVID-19/clinical experience, their experience in human resource management and in dialogue with further project collaborators. It was provided in German language and comprised a total of 24 questions on the intensive care bed situation (5 items), critical care staffing situation (6 items), recruitment strategies (6 items) and reallocation/shifting of personnel, that were closed-ended or semi-closed. The types of closed-ended questions used included trichotomous, single-choice and multiple-choice questions, as well as a Likert scaled question assessing recruitment methods. The structure of the questionnaire and outcome parameters are presented in Table  1 ; for the complete questionnaire (German original version and English translated version), please see Additional file 1 .

Data analysis

Data analysis was performed using MS Excel 2019; figures were prepared with GraphPad Prism 5 (GraphPad Software, San Diego, CA, USA). Due to the exploratory nature of our study and research questions, we mainly performed descriptive data analysis. For hospitals that had called up the questionnaire several times, only the completed data set was included in the analysis. Data sets that had not been completed by the central contact persons were excluded. Questions that had been answered by less than 50% of participating clinics were also excluded from the analysis.

For reasons of comparison, the ratio of the number of full-time positions and the number of intensive care beds was calculated for each occupational group and hospital. To present the situation regarding personnel before the pandemic, the staffing data were related to the number of ICU beds set up (as of January 1, 2020); for the additional staffing requirements during the pandemic, the total number of currently operable ICU beds (low-care and high-care; as of April 24, 2020) served as reference value. The key data on the number of intensive care beds were derived from the DIVI Intensive Care Bed Registry and were made available by the RKI.

Data on full-time positions, number of employees and duration of deployment are given as medians, since this parameter better reflects the majority of hospitals in our data set compared to the mean.

Of a total of 152 hospitals requested, 41 participated in the survey (response rate 27.0%). One main question and 8 sub-questions (“if yes” questions) could not be evaluated since the response rates or number of data sets were too low.

An overview of the participating hospitals in terms of geographic location, level of care and Covid-19 patient volume is shown in Table  2 .

Intensive care bed capacity

Even before the pandemic (January and February 2020), bed closures due to staff shortages in intensive care occurred in 80.5% of the hospitals surveyed (see Fig.  1 a). On median, four beds per day had to be closed.

The additional need for intensive care beds in the course of the pandemic was mainly met by activating intensive care beds previously (February 2020) considered as non-operational in existing ICUs (80.5% of the participating hospitals) and by upgrading recovery rooms (73.2% of the participating hospitals). A median of 8 intensive care beds were prepared in recovery rooms, but they were not occupied. Other measures, such as upgrading operating rooms (17.1%) and preparing external ICUs (7.3%), were taken by a comparatively lower proportion of the participating hospitals (see Fig.  1 b-c). Due to their low occurrence, there are only a few data sets on the number of prepared ICU beds, occupancy rate and duration of occupancy, which do not allow any valid statements to be made.

Measures to expand intensive care capacities during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. ( a ) Hospitals were asked whether bed closures due to critical care staffing shortages occurred prior to the pandemic in their hospital (in January and February 2020). Answers are given in percentage terms. n  = 41, N.s./n.a. Not specified/not answered. The median number of beds blocked per day was 4 (data not shown in the graph). ( b ) Hospitals were asked if intensive care beds had been activated in their hospital during the pandemic which were still considered inoperable as of February 2020. Answers are given in percentage terms. n  = 41, N.s./n.a. Not specified/not answered. ( c ) Hospitals were asked whether they were preparing to run new ICUs in recovery rooms (RR), operating rooms (OR) and outside the hospital (e.g., in mess halls). Answers are shown as percentages for each area. n  = 40–41, N.s./N.a. Not specified/not answered

Personnel situation in intensive care medicine before and during the pandemic

A median of 42 full-time positions for healthcare and nursing staff, 12 full-time positions for physicians, 1 full-time position for physiotherapists (PT)/respiratory therapists (RT) and 1.5 full-time positions for ward assistants were provided for intensive care per hospital before the pandemic (absolute numbers). After standardization, at median 1.68 full-time positions per ICU bed set up were planned for the occupational group of healthcare and nursing staff. Of these, 0.16 positions could not be filled (vacancy rate 9.5%). In the occupational group of physicians, a median of 0.4 full-time positions per ICU bed set up were included in the staffing plan, all of which could be filled (vacancy rate 0%). In the occupational groups of PT/RT and ward assistants, 0.05 full-time positions per ICU bed set up were planned, which were also filled at median (vacancy rate 0%) (see Fig.  2 a).

When asked for temporary staff, approximately one third of the hospitals that provided information on this (9/29; 31.0%) had employed temporary staff primarily in the nursing service of their ICUs (median 9.3 full-time positions). Temporary staff was employed to a much lesser extent in the PT/RT group (median 3.0 full-time positions) and in the medical service (median 1 full-time position) (data not shown).

The increased demand for intensive care beds due to the pandemic also led to an increase in the demand for nursing and medical staff. In the occupational group of healthcare and nursing staff, a median demand of 0.26 additional full-time positions per operable ICU bed (as of April 24, 2020) had developed. Regarding the occupational group of physicians, a median demand of additional 0.10 full-time positions per operable ICU bed was found. While the majority of the additional positions required in the medical service (0.07 full-time positions per operable ICU bed) could be filled by reallocating/shifting staff and by recruiting/employing new staff, only 42% of the nursing staff (0.11 full-time positions per operable ICU bed) could be done so (see Fig.  2 b). Additional demand for the staff groups of PT/RT and ward assistants could not be identified (data not shown).

In addition to increasing the number of personnel, changes of the staffing ratios were also used. Slightly more than half of the hospitals (56.1%) reported a change in the nurse-to-patient ratio or nursing-skill-mix (see Fig.  2 c). Since further data on this are partly incomplete, no more precise statements can be made with regard to how and to what extent the ratio(s) had changed.

Staffing situation in critical care before and during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. ( a ) Number of designated and vacant positions (full-time) for critical care medicine before the pandemic. Hospitals were asked to provide corresponding information on the specified professional groups in their hospital. The number of positions was related to the number of ICU beds set up (as of January 1, 2020); the medians of the hospitals are shown ( n  = 24–29). PT/RT Physiotherapists/respiratory therapists. ( b ) Additional staff requirements (full-time) in intensive care medicine during the pandemic and actual filling of the additional positions (through reallocation/shifting and through recruitment/new hires). The hospitals were asked to provide corresponding information on the specified occupational groups in their hospital. The number of positions was related to the total number of currently operable intensive care beds (as of April 24, 2020); the medians of the hospitals are shown ( n  = 26–29). No additional demand was identified for the staff groups of physiotherapists/respiratory therapists, ward assistants and others (data not shown). ( c ) The hospitals were asked whether the nurse-to-patient ratio or nursing-skill-mix of the staff in intensive care medicine had changed at their hospital. Answers are given in percentage terms. n  = 39, N.s./n.a. Not specified/not answered

Staff recruitment

When asked what measures were used to meet staffing needs during the pandemic, reallocation/shifting of staff was cited most often (85.4%), followed by requesting former staff retired or currently on parental leave (48.8%), increasing the working hours of internal staff (48.8%) and new recruits (incl. temporary contracts; 43.9%). Temporary staffing increased in 31.7% of the participating hospitals (see Fig.  3 a).

The reallocation/transfer of staff played a central role in covering the personnel requirements. Shifts of staff between different disciplines within a hospital occurred in 80.5% of participating hospitals. Moreover, 39% indicated that they had transferred staff between different ICUs within their hospital. The transfer of staff between different facilities within a group and between different facilities in a region took place only in a small proportion of hospitals (7.3%) and in none of them, respectively (see Fig.  3 b).

Furthermore, hospitals were asked which strategies and instruments they used as part of the recruitment of new staff. In addition to calls on clinic homepages (36.6%) and in other media, e.g. social media (41.5%), 36.6% of the hospitals reported that they had established an internal office to manage pandemic-related staff recruitment. The involvement of an external personnel recruiter took place in only 7% of participating hospitals (see Fig.  3 c).

Special incentives for staff recruitment were used by 17.1% of the hospitals (data not shown). Those came in form of cash benefits and/or additional leave.

Recruitment efforts in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. ( a ) Instruments and strategies used to meet staffing needs that were indicated by participating hospitals. Answers are given in percentage terms; multiple answers were possible. n  = 38, N.s./n.a. Not specified/not answered. ( b ) Types of reallocation/shifts of medical personnel in the participating hospitals. Answers are given in percentage terms; multiple answers were possible. n  = 35, N.s./n.a. Not specified/not answered, ICUs intensive care units. ( c ) Strategies and instruments used in the context of recruiting new employees that were reported by participating hospitals. Answers are given in percentage terms; multiple answers were possible. n  = 39, N.s./n.a. Not specified/not answered

Reallocation/shift of personnel

In 82.9% of hospitals, physicians from anesthesiology departments, who are normally assigned to the operating room, were appointed to the ICU (Fig.  4 a). A median of five full-time positions or five anesthesiologists were deployed over a period of about 8 weeks. In about one in two hospitals (48.9%), also physicians from other disciplines, in which intensive care medicine is part of the specialist training, were transferred to the ICU. In this case, the number of data sets was too small to make a valid statement regarding the number and corresponding duration of deployment of the respective staff members.

The reallocation of doctors without intensive care training was negated by 80.5% of participating hospitals (see Fig.  4 a).

Among nursing staff, particularly anesthesia nurses or anesthesia technicians were deployed in the ICU (85% of participating hospitals) (see Fig.  4 b). A median of five full-time positions or six staff members at maximum were assigned over a period of 6 weeks.

In about every second hospital, surgical nurses or surgical technicians (53.7%) as well as nursing staff from normal wards or intervention units (51.2%) were assigned to intensive care medicine (see. Fig.  4 b). Here again, the data sets were too small to make a valid statement regarding the number and corresponding duration of deployment of the respective staff members. The reallocation of other personnel was negated by 73.2% of participating hospitals (see Fig.  4 b).

Reallocation of personnel to intensive care units during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. ( a ) Reallocation of physicians according to their professional qualification. Hospitals were asked whether physicians of anesthesiology departments, physicians of other departments where intensive care medicine is part of the specialist training and physicians of other departments in which intensive care medicine is not part of the specialist training were deployed to ICUs in their hospital. Answers are given in percentage terms for each group. n  = 39, N.s./n.a. Not specified/not answered. ( b ) Reallocation of nursing staff according to their professional qualification and of other employees. Analogously, the hospitals were asked whether anesthesia nurses and anesthesia technicians (corresponding in Germany to Anästhesie-Fachpflegekräfte bzw. Anästhesie-Technische Assistenten (ATAs) ), surgical nurses and surgical technicians (in Germany OP-Fachpflegekräfte bzw. Operationstechnische Assistenten (OTAs) ) as well as nursing personnel from normal wards or intervention units (e.g., cardiac catheterization lab) were deployed to ICUs in their hospital. Answers are given in percentage terms for each group. n  = 39, N.s./n.a. Not specified/not answered

Evaluation of recruitment measures

Reallocations/transfers between different disciplines within a hospital and between different ICUs emerged as the most effective measures in the pandemic (Fig.  5 ). On a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being not effective at all and 5 being very effective, both instruments were rated 4 or 5 by 53.7% (shifting between different disciplines) and 39% (shifting between different ICUs) of the participating hospitals, whereby transfer of personnel between different disciplines took place in nearly every hospital. Expanding the use of temporary staff and increasing the hours of internal staff were each rated at 4 or 5 by approximately one third of the clinics, followed by inquiring of former staff retired or currently on parental leave (29.3%), recruiting/new staff (26.8%), and using an internal position to manage pandemic-related staff recruitment (22.0%). Conventional strategies such as appeals on homepages or through other media (including social media) were rated 1 or 2 by 29.3% of participating hospitals. In comparison, only 12.2% of the clinics rated these as 4 or 5.

Other measures such as reallocation between different facilities of a group or between different facilities of a region as well as the engagement of a professional external personnel recruiting were not used by the majority of the participating hospitals, the significance with regard to their efficiency is therefore very limited.

Assessing the effectiveness of recruitment interventions and strategies. Hospitals were asked to rate the effectiveness of various recruitment measures and strategies during the first wave of the pandemic using a scale of 1 ( not very effective at all ) to 5 ( very effective ). Data sets from 39 of the 41 participating hospitals were included in the analysis. Only those participating hospitals that provided a rating (from 1 to 5) were considered in determining the median

In this study, we assessed the staffing situation as well as local concepts for staff recruitment and their effectiveness throughout German ICUs during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results from this nationwide analysis showed that the activation of ICU beds, which were previously considered non-operational (due to staff shortages), and the preparation of recovery rooms played a central role in expanding pandemic-related ICU bed capacity. In preparation of the expected rise in infections at the beginning of the pandemic, the federal and state governments had decided to double the number of intensive care beds by building up temporary intensive care capacity [ 24 ]. The preparation of recovery rooms to increase intensive care capacities is also listed among the recommendations on “Hospital Operational Planning and Crisis Management”, which was released by the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance [ 11 , 25 ]. Also, by international standards, upgrading recovery rooms appears to be a key element in rapidly increasing intensive care capacity in times of crisis [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 ].

According to our data, the construction of external ICUs and the preparation of operating rooms was, in comparison, of minor importance. Only 3 out of the 41 hospitals surveyed confirmed the operation/construction of external ICUs. These hospitals represent university or tertiary care hospitals that were classified as hospitals with middle (1) and high COVID-load (2) and/or hospitals that were located in highly affected regions during the first wave of the pandemic. Only one (high COVID-load) of these three hospitals actually used their external ICU for COVID patients.

From a global perspective, the conversion of facilities to external ICUs depends on regional infrastructure and politics. While for Israel, for example, the use of external ICUs was reported through repurposing existing infrastructure, such as an underground parking lot that was otherwise used as an emergency shelter hospital in times of war [ 30 ], this would not have been conceivable in Germany. Here, for example, exhibition halls and sports halls were rebuilt in COVID-19 centers [ 31 ]. The preparation of operating rooms was a key element in enhancing ICU capacity in other countries as well. Lefrant et al. reported that 32% of new ICU beds were created by upgrading operating rooms in France [ 29 ]. Likewise, in Italy, Carenzo et al. [ 28 ] described that ICU capacity had been increased substantially by converting operating rooms.

The extension of intensive care capacity is accompanied by an increasing need for medical and nursing staff. The results of the present study show that in particular, the shortage of nursing staff, which was already present before the pandemic, exacerbated during the pandemic, despite various recruitment efforts. A similar picture emerges in other countries, e.g. Australia [ 32 ]. Despite the activation of ICU beds, the quality of intensive care treatment in many places does not meet the pre-pandemic standards. Impairments in the quality of care are due to staff shortages, high workloads, inadequate provision of protective equipment for staff, shortage of medication and ventilation equipment, as well as knowledge deficits due to the novelty of the disease and lack of experience/routines [ 33 , 34 ]. Nursing staff reported improvised conditions, situations that put patients at risk and the fear of making mistakes [ 34 ]. The enormous workload, the new and challenging working conditions and the fear of infecting oneself and loved ones such as family and friends have also led to an increased susceptibility of healthcare professionals to psychological stress, which has resulted in higher prevalence rates for anxiety, depression, burn-out, acute stress disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder [ 35 ]. According to a study by Lai et al. [ 36 ], nursing staff, women and front-line workers have a higher risk of developing psychological stress, presumably due to more intensive patient contact, a higher risk of infection and fewer opportunities for codetermination. Women are also disproportionately represented in the nursing profession. The enhanced wearing of protective equipment is of particular importance, as it is also experienced as physically very stressful [ 34 ] and described in connection with communication difficulties, a negative impact on personal performance and on physical health (e.g., exhaustion, headache, breathlessness) [ 37 ]. In the subsequent COVID waves, persistent psychological stress was identified [ 35 , 38 ]. In addition to efforts to recruit additional staff, efforts to relieve the burden on nursing staff should therefore include offers of peer psychosocial support, the implementation of team concepts to strengthen cohesion, resilience and appreciation, as well as other measures.

To cover the increased personnel requirements in the short-term, various measures and strategies were taken by German hospitals. The reallocation/shifting of personnel, primarily between different disciplines within hospitals, played a central role and was used in almost all of the participating hospitals in our survey. Further measures that were implemented, albeit less frequently, included inquiring of former employees who had already retired or were currently on parental leave, extending the working hours of internal forces, recruiting new staff (incl. short-term contracts) and expanding the share of temporary employment. For the implementation of some measures, a change or suspension of the existing legislation was necessary. The change in the nurse-to-patient ratio or the nursing-skill-mix, for example, was enabled by a temporary suspension of the PpUGV [ 9 ] and took place in every second of the participating hospitals. The aim was to enable hospitals to adjust their workflows at very short notice and to briefly relieve them of the requirements for nursing staff deployment in care-sensitive areas. Effective August 1, 2020, the regulations for critical care and geriatrics were reinstated to avoid understaffing in nursing and jeopardizing the particularly vulnerable patients to be treated in these two areas. The nurse-to-patient ratio defines the maximum number of patients per nurse, while the nursing-skill-mix represents the ratio of nursing and auxiliary staff. Until January 31, 2021, the PpUGV provided a maximum of 2.5 patients per nurse during day shifts or 3.5 patients per nurse during night shifts in intensive care [ 9 ].

The measures reported here are in line with previous reports using information from websites of Federal and State Ministries of Health and public health facilities or data from the COVID-19 Health System and Response Monitor platform [ 13 , 14 , 17 ]. These studies also list further strategies for Germany, such as the recruitment of trained foreign personnel and support by medical personnel from the military, which, however, have not been explicitly asked for in our study. Countries in the European region and Canada adopted at least two or more measures in combination [ 14 ].

With regard to the reallocation of staff, personnel from anesthesiology departments (physicians and nursing staff) have been primarily deployed in ICUs. This is mainly due to the fact that intensive care is a prominent part of training for both anesthesiologists as well as anesthesia nurses and that at the same time elective surgeries and interventions had been cancelled at a very early stage of the pandemic in Germany (with a low number of COVID patients), leading to a freeing of personnel resources. Additionally, medical staff trained in intensive care medicine from other specialties as well as surgical nurses/surgical technicians and nurses from general wards and intervention units were temporarily shifted to ICUs in one out of two participating hospitals. Reallocation, however, is not entirely unproblematic, as patients and tasks in ICUs require specific expertise, incl. handling of a variety of medical equipment, and experiences. Takeover of tasks by non-specialist nurses and physicians should therefore only be applied with appropriate training in intensive care. In Germany, working on an ICU formally requires a completed 3-year vocational training as a general nurse [ 39 ] or, equivalently, a Bachelor’s degree in nursing/nursing science. This can be supplemented by a 2-year specialist further training in “Intensive Care” or “Intensive and Anesthesia Care”. According to legal regulations [ 40 , 41 ] and recommendations by the DIVI [ 42 ], a certain minimum proportion of nurses with additional specialist further training must be available in the nursing team in ICUs on each shift.

While previous studies on expanding and securing staff capacity mainly concentrated on qualitative analyses of the measures used, our study also evaluated their efficiency in practice based on individual ratings of participating hospitals. The findings on this reflect subjective perceptions which are presumably geared more towards the professional group of physicians as 95% of the central contacts were doctors in management positions in the field of intensive care medicine (see Table  2 ). Our results uncover that the reallocation of staff between different disciplines within a hospital and between different ICUs within a hospital were rated as the most effective recruiting measures, whereby reallocation between different disciplines was used by the majority of participating hospitals. Compared to this, reallocation of staff between different ICUs occurred somewhat less, probably indicating some specialization of ICUs in the care for COVID patients. However, when comparing those findings with the data in Fig.  2 b providing a more objective assessment, it becomes apparent that the reallocation alone is not sufficient to cover the additional demand for personnel. This is particularly visible in the nursing staff group.

Measures like “expansion of temporary employment”, “increase working hours of internal staff”, “inquiry with former employees who have retired or are currently on parental leave” and “new recruitments”, however, were perceived as less effective; reasons could be administrative efforts which are linked to these but also limited availability of former and new personnel as well as limited capacities for increasing working hours. Initiatives such as appeals on websites and social media were rated least effective. Target persons may not have felt personally addressed or have not used these communication tools.

Although the establishment of an internal position to manage the pandemic-related staff recruitment was reported by over a third of the respondents, it was comparably rated as ineffective by the majority. Maybe operating and communication processes need to be optimized to make this measure more efficient and provide stronger support in recruitment and training matters for hospitals in crisis situations. The New York City (NYC) Health and Hospitals organization, for example, which operates NYC’s public hospitals, has been very successful in implementing this tool with others as part of redesigned recruitment, onboarding, and training processes, and has been able to acquire a large number of additional staffing members [ 43 ].

When evaluating the recruitment strategy in this study, it should be noted that it only considers the increase in personnel, but does not take into account the quality of intensive care. Future studies should include this point (e.g., by recording quality indicators) and involve it in the overall assessment, as this is the only way to make statements about the actual effectiveness.

Special incentives (monetary and non-monetary) did not play a role in recruiting staff for the majority of respondents. Only a small proportion of respondents affirmed the use. How much additional staff could be recruited through this or whether the hospitals that used this measure were able to generate more staff is not answered by this study.

Limitations

The response rate to the survey is only 27%, despite sending reminders to the central contact persons. This fact limits the representativeness of the results. In addition, the online questionnaire was sometimes answered incompletely. As a consequence, some questions could not be evaluated due to only few available data sets. One reason for non-participation or non-response to individual questions might have been the challenge to report detailed numeric data with regard to the staffing situation and intensive care bed capacity, which might have required some internal inquiry. Additionally, the COVID-19-related tense situation in the hospitals at the time of the survey might have prevented participation in individual cases.

Furthermore, the low response rate did not allow us to run subgroup analyses and further differentiate the results between the level of care of the hospitals and the corresponding COVID burden. The selection of an initial larger sample and/or a modified implementation strategy might be useful tools for future online surveys.

Other limitations are the transferability of the results and the lack of testing validity and reliability on the questionnaire. The results should primarily be considered in the context of hospitals in Germany. Generalization or transferability to other healthcare systems is limited due to the existing differences between the healthcare systems, including different training concepts for medical and nursing staff. The choice of closed and semi-open item response options as well as precisely formulated and clearly defined questions for collecting information were intended to ensure valid and reliable data, although statistical tests on these quality criteria were not carried out in advance of the survey.

Nevertheless, compared to previous reports, the data of our study were collected directly from the hospitals themselves and thus provide not only a qualitative but also a quantitative insight into the strategies and measures used for workforce planning during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. In addition, the study provides, to our knowledge, for the first time an evaluation of which of the measures were perceived effective in practice. Of equal interest would have been the recruitment processes/measures used in subsequent waves of the pandemic and resulting changes, which may be the subject of future studies.

The results of our study provide detailed insights into how hospitals in Germany managed the first Covid-19 wave with regard to the bed and staffing situation. By activating intensive care beds that previously considered inoperable due to staff shortages and preparing recovery rooms additional intensive care capacity has been made available. Furthermore, our findings reveal that the pandemic has exacerbated the existing shortage in nursing staff despite numerous recruitment efforts. This fact reflects a key issue that was and continues to be critical also in other settings.

Reallocation/shifting of staff within hospitals was a pivotal element in meeting staffing needs, although further measures are required in addition. Number and type of those employed may depend on several factors (e.g., local, structural and/or financial). Our findings provide an important and valuable decision-making aid to support healthcare providers and policymakers in preparing for and responding to future crises involving acutely increasing patient numbers and the need for rapid expansion of intensive care capacity.

Data availability

The data sets generated and analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to reasons of data protection but are available from the corresponding author, CN, on reasonable request. Acceptance is subject to approval from participating hospitals.

Abbreviations

Deutsche Interdisziplinäre Vereinigung für Intensiv- und Notfallmedizin , German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine

Full-Time Position

Intensive Care Unit(s)

Pflegepersonaluntergrenzenverordnung , Nursing Staff Lower Limit Ordinance

Physiotherapist

Robert Koch Institute

Respiratory Therapist

World Health Organization

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all participating hospitals, particularly the central contact persons who contributed to this study. We would also like to thank the RKI for providing the Intensive Care Registry data for sampling. Furthermore, we wish to thank Saša Sopka (Aachen University Hospital), Martin Klasen (Aachen University Hospital), Sophie Lambert (Aachen University Hospital) and Gunther Hempel (Leipzig University Hospital) for their input to this study.

The study was funded within the egePan Unimed project by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the Netzwerk Universitätsmedizin (NUM) initiative (grant no. 01KX2021). Additional financial support was provided by the principal investigators’ institutions. The funders had no role in the design of the study, collection, analysis and interpretation of data or in writing the manuscript.

Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.

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Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care, University Medical Centre Schleswig-Holstein, Campus Lübeck, Ratzeburger Allee 160, 23538, Lübeck, Germany

Lara C. Stroth, Franziska Jahns, Berit Bode, Maike Stender & Carla Nau

Department of Anaesthesiology, Medical Faculty, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Pauwelsstraße 30, 52074, Aachen, Germany

Michelle Schmidt

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Contributions

CN, HB, BS, MSC, BB, LCS and FJ contributed to planning and realization of the study, including preparation of study material and communication with hospitals. Data evaluation and writing of the manuscript were conducted by LCS, FJ and MS. BB, HB, NE, BS and MSC critically reviewed the manuscript and made substantial contributions to it. CN scientifically supervised the study, contributed to the interpretation of data and to the drafting of the manuscript. All the authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Carla Nau .

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The study was performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the ethics committee of RWTH Aachen University (case no. 459/20). The clinics declared their participation in the study by naming a contact person from the field of intensive care medicine; by completing the voluntary questionnaire the clinics gave their informed consent.

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Stroth, L.C., Jahns, F., Bode, B. et al. Workforce strategies during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic: a retrospective online survey at intensive care units in Germany. BMC Health Serv Res 24 , 407 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-10848-w

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Published : 01 April 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-10848-w

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New Federal Health IT Strategy Sets Sights on a Heathier, More Innovative, and More Equitable Health Care Experience

ONC seeks public comment by May 28, 2024

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) through the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), today released the draft 2024–2030 Federal Health IT Strategic Plan (the draft Plan) for public comment. The draft Plan:

• Outlines federal health IT goals and objectives that are focused on improving access to health data, delivering a better, more equitable health care experience, and modernizing our nation’s public health data infrastructure.
• Places an emphasis on the policy and technology components necessary to support the diverse data needs of all health IT users.
• Supports the Department’s recent Health Data, Technology, and Interoperability: Certification Program Updates, Algorithm Transparency, and Information Sharing (HTI-1) final rule to advance the access, exchange, and use of electronic health information (EHI), and deliver more transparent and equitable care for individuals.
• Aligns with the HHS Health Care Sector Cybersecurity  concept paper and voluntary health care specific  Cybersecurity Performance Goals   (CPGs) to help health care organizations prioritize implementation of high-impact cybersecurity practices.

“As part of our statutory duty to align and coordinate health IT efforts with our federal partners, ONC collaborated on the draft Plan with more than 25 federal agencies. These agencies regulate, purchase, develop, and use health IT to deliver care and improve health outcomes, and they increasingly rely on the access, exchange, and use of EHI to effectively execute their missions,” said Micky Tripathi, Ph.D., national coordinator for health information technology. “We look forward to public comments to help inform the federal government's health IT strategy for the coming years.”

Health IT is integral to how health care is delivered, how health is managed, and how the health of populations and communities is tracked. Thanks in part to the development of common standards, such as the United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) and Health Level Seven International® (HL7®) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources® (FHIR®), health information has become more accessible and useful. Recent data shows that more than 88 percent of hospitals report electronically sending and obtaining patient health information and more than 60 percent report integrating that information into their electronic health records (EHRs). In addition, more individuals report accessing their health information online than ever before.

“The role of health IT and readily available access to health data have become increasingly essential to the administration of public health activities,” said Jim Jirjis, director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Data Policy and Standards Division. “CDC appreciates how the draft 2024-2030 Federal Health IT Strategic Plan addresses the need to continue to advance the nation’s public health data infrastructure, while making sure that it is benefiting the communities that need it most.”

“As the VA modernizes its electronic health record system, the draft 2024-2030 Federal Health IT Strategic Plan provides direction towards a seamless health care experience that helps patients and providers benefit from a connected health system,” said Meg Marshall, director of informatics regulatory affairs at the Veterans Health Administration. “Not only that, the draft Federal Health IT Strategic Plan serves as an actionable roadmap for the federal government to align and coordinate health IT efforts in a transparent and accountable manner. We are looking for public comment about ways to improve health through health IT, so that Veterans too can benefit from the goals of a coordinated federal health IT strategy.”

The draft Plan emphasizes that all populations in the United States can and should benefit from health IT, expanding to include additional sectors, such as public health, and addressing how technologies, such as artificial intelligence, affect health care.

The public comment period for the draft 2024-2030 Federal Health IT Strategic Plan ends on May 28, 2024 at 11:59 pm ET. Visit HealthIT.gov to learn more about how you can submit your comments about the draft Plan.

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