Originally a spin-off from the Hewlett-Packard company, Agilent Technologies is now the world’s premier measurement company operating through three complementary businesses – life sciences, chemical analysis and electronic measurement. Its 19,000 employees serve customers in more than 110 countries and generate revenues of over $5 billion.

Aware that the key challenge for RPO providers lies in getting a rapid, in-depth understanding of what makes their client partner ‘tick’, team members from Ochre House, Pinstripe and Agilent itself began the relationship by completely immersing themselves within the company. This involved extensive discovery interviews with a wide range of divisional managers, as well as participation in new hire orientation programmes and department overviews. The aim? To ensure that the new talent acquisition team completely understood both the operation and the culture of the business - the essential foundation of successful targeting, attraction, recruitment and on-boarding of new employees.

Totally committed to the concept of ‘getting things done’, the combined Ochre House, Pinstripe and Agilent team exceeded all expectations of the time necessary to implement the new talent acquisition model. Instead of the industry standard of three to six months the partners were able to complete implementation in five weeks and well within designated budget.

Agilent now has a dedicated ‘resourcing centre of excellence’ based out of regional hubs in both the UK and USA where all recruitment and resourcing activities, including planning, sourcing, assessment, selection and induction, are centralised and managed. The complete recruitment process is underpinned by a single global technology platform which enables the partners to build and share a truly international talent pool of both active and passive candidates who can be pipelined or rapidly activated to meet local staffing needs. To ensure maximum efficiency the service is managed by a joint Ochre House and Pinstripe account team which is responsible, not just for meeting all KPIs, but for ensuring continuous improvement and innovation.

The centre of excellence has been rewarded with a top place in ‘Agilent Innovates’, a competition run by the company to identify and recognise projects that have had the most positive effect on the business through innovation and imagination.

“This project is one of the fastest, most successfully implemented outsourcing projects at Agilent. Our hiring managers have been impressed with the quality of candidates delivered, which they have attributed to our partners’ in depth recruiter training and total immersion into our corporate culture.”

Nury Plumley, Global Staffing Programmes Manager, Agilent