Building a 1,200-strong talent pool in just eight weeks

The client is a subsidiary of one of the world's leading healthcare companies, offering a comprehensive portfolio of products and services for joint reconstruction, trauma, spine, sports medicine, neuro, cranio-maxillofacial, power tools and biomaterials. Their parent company is a leading brand with an excellent reputation and over 100,000 employees worldwide.

Finding qualified workers is incredibly difficult in the medical product industry. It's far from being an employer's market. Attracting top engineers is a challenge. So, when our client opened a new facility in Western Ireland, they had a lot of work to do. They needed to find potential hires and establish themselves as a desirable global employer.

On one hand, demand is high, there is a severe skills shortage, and salary levels are soaring in some niche areas. On the other hand, many potential candidates are already engaged in interesting projects. They are therefore "passive," i.e., reluctant to move before concluding a project, even if an attractive salary package is on offer.

A reactive approach using contingency recruitment agencies is therefore inadequate in these circumstances. The client’s in-house talent acquisition team needed support to identify suitably qualified candidates across a range of skills to fill niche roles such as Senior Manufacturing Engineer, Metrology Engineer, Sterility Assurance Scientist, CNC Engineer, Chemical Engineer and Metallurgist. As part of a leading multinational, the client was also keen to take advantage of opportunities to build awareness of the company’s employer brand within the new geography.

Talent pooling takes recruitment from reactive to proactive: it establishes relationships with a pool of potential candidates who offer the precise competence sets that best suit the employer’s needs. Building a talent pool is an effective way for recruiters to ensure a constant flow of candidates is available when needed. 

Our Talent Solutions team at Morgan McKinley started by conducting interviews with the client’s talent acquisition team and the hiring departments to understand the precise requirements of the business and each role. This enabled us to form a clear picture of what “success looks like”.

-Maria Cosgrove, Project Leader 

Our Talent Solutions team then briefed its data services team to interrogate the database and identify candidates with the right profile. This surfaced some 6,500 individuals active locally or abroad. Screening reduced the number to 1,200 well-qualified professionals who matched the profiles and were eligible for employment. Our Talent Solutions team then contacted them to introduce the client, asking if they would be interested in joining the company immediately, or within a one, three or five year timeframe.

The project took just eight weeks and saved the client’s talent acquisition team the massive effort that would be required to source, screen, qualify, and engage with candidates. Therefore, the internal TA team could get on with “business as usual” while the talent pool was created. Seven candidates were appointed to key roles as a direct result of the project, and the client received a talent pool of 1,200 potential future employees.

The talent pooling team actively promoted the client’s employee brand, engaging with local and international candidates who were otherwise passive, i.e., not currently looking for jobs. This is vitally important: at some stage, these highly talented professionals will reach the end of their current projects and start thinking about the next challenge. The client wants to ensure that it is top of mind when that happens.