CLIENT ASSIGNMENT
The company is a world leader in providing fitness equipment and implementing innovative wellness solutions. For more than 35 years, they have been helping people live healthier and happier lives. They are advocates of a healthy lifestyle involving physical activity, good nutrition and positive thinking. We have been asked to help fill the position of Financial Controller / Plant Controller.
The company has a global presence, with part of the management team based in Italy. The position of Plant Financial Controller was filled through the plant’s own HR department and other in-house resources over an extended period of time, approximately half a year. And without success. They then turned to our recruitment agency with confidence, as we are a Slovak recruitment agency and we know the labour market in selected cities in Slovakia well.
OUR SOLUTION
We have agreed with the client to cooperate in filling the required job position by recruiting. After a thorough job analysis where we asked targeted and detailed questions about all the details and the employer’s ideas. We were interested in the detailed job description, responsibilities of the employee, challenges, plans, requirements for personality traits, required work experience, education, up to the offer of salary and benefits, which must be interesting due to the location where the company is located.
Subsequently, we developed an advertisement and published a targeted job offer on the Profesia portal. Our activities were further linked to the search for suitable candidates matching the specified criteria in other available databases. The result was 58 candidates with whom we actively worked. Several of them have been interviewed by our consultants. We presented 10 candidates to the client in the first round. The client selected 3 suitable candidates to meet and interview with company representatives in person.
As the client also has part of the company’s management in Italy, a follow-up meeting – a Skype interview – was necessary at this level as well. Skype job interviews were conducted with 2 of our candidates. 1 candidate has been shortlisted. The client was deciding between a candidate recommended by us and a candidate recommended by his own employee. In the end, the client chose his own candidate. When asked what tipped the balance, the client replied that it was very close (49:50 ratio) but he wanted to give the opportunity to the recommended candidate. Subsequently, the client admitted that the financial costs associated with the choice were also crucial. He therefore preferred a candidate for whom he did not have to pay a brokerage fee.
After a few months, however, this proved to be less than ideal. As part of the probationary period, the new employee had to say goodbye and had to repeat the selection process for the position of Financial Controller. We were approached to see if we could contact our candidate to see if they were still interested in the position. This tends to be a very difficult step, and most of the time there is very little chance that a suitable candidate will be interested in the offer even after a period of several months. Quality people are not available on the labour market for very long. We had no information on whether he had accepted another job offer in the meantime, but he was willing to hear us out.
We managed to motivate the candidate enough to be willing to meet with the company management again and talk about the conditions of entry. In the final stage of his decision-making, he preferred another, very interesting, offer linked to his personal and professional growth and experience abroad.
HR services
During the filling of the position of Financial Controller / Plant Controller, we provided our client with HR consulting at the beginning of our communication, during which we got to know the expectations of the employer and created a picture for the development of a profile of a suitable candidate for the successful filling of the position. For the client, we initially prepared an analysis of the salary requirements for the position of controller in relation to the location where the company is located. For the search of candidates, we have, among other things, created a suitable job advertisement. The recruiting process itself required interviewing, testing of candidates and accompanying consultancy activities to select suitable candidates. The project is still ongoing. We presented 2 new candidates to the client but the requirement was not met. The client’s location and the area in which it operates is quite a significant barrier to filling the position with a suitable candidate.
Several months have passed since the assignment on 29.7.2019. If the client had not hesitated and procrastinated in selecting and commenting on candidates in the initial phase of the cooperation, the position could have been solved and successfully filled.
Banská Bystrica Region
58 candidates
2 different approaches to selecting candidates
Personnel services provided
Personnel consultancy
We provided our client providing services in the industry in Slovakia, but also abroad, with initial HR consultations and up-to-date information about the position to be filled, from the perspective of our many years of experience and the current requirements of the labour market.
Payroll consultancy
Recruiting
