Customer Stories 
Summary
Multinational manufacturer ABB wanted to boost its employer brand and pipeline ahead of demand in the tough market for engineers. With Avature CRM, ABB launched a branded talent portal to grow their talent pool, used segmentation and customizable email templates to deliver their brand message, and developed their presence on social media channels. As a result, ABB doubled its LinkedIn Talent Brand Index rating, reduced time-to-fill from 75-85 to 55-65 days, and decreased their cost-per-hire by 40 percent.
ABB is a pioneering technology leader that works closely with utility, industry, transport and infrastructure customers in roughly 100 countries. With more than four decades at the forefront of digital technologies, they are a leader in digitally connected and enabled industrial equipment and systems with an installed base of more than 70,000 control systems connecting 70 million devices. ABB is truly a global firm, with talent needs that cross cultural and regulatory borders. ABB deploys Avature CRM to support their recruiting operations.
Challenges
Although ABB had a strong employer brand in Europe, they faced significantly lower levels of recognition in the US. Bill Fowles, Talent Acquisition Manager for ABB in the US, said that “if you’re not an engineer, you may not be aware of any ABB products.” Engineers, meanwhile, are among the most difficult professionals to hire, with fierce demand for top talent. ABB sought to attract high quality engineers by raising its brand profile in North America. In addition, they needed a way to measure the results of their new strategy.
Strategy
To grow its talent pool of high quality engineers and improve its name recognition among potential employees, ABB planned a video campaign featuring testimonials from its current employees. Fowles noted that “more and more of our employees are seeing the opportunity to share stories and get more involved in social media, which has really made the difference.” ABB wanted to widen its social media community and publicize the videos through social networks.
In order to measure impact, ABB settled on three key metrics. To measure the volume of candidates entering its talent pool ABB tracked the number of phone screens per day. To measure employer brand, they looked at LinkedIn’s Talent Brand Index rating for ABB, a strong measure of employer brand and recognition. Lastly, to make sure that their efforts were impacting the end result of the recruiting process, ABB also focused on quality-of-hire, determined by hiring manager satisfaction surveys.
Solution
ABB chose Avature CRM to support their multi-pronged strategy. They leveraged email campaigns through Avature which included video links and automatic customization to create a personalized experience for each recipient. Additionally, a branded talent portal allowed individuals to enter themselves into ABB’s talent pool just by filling out a short form. Scheduled actions including automatic welcome emails and follow-up communications engaged individuals with ABB. After launching its video testimonial series, ABB encouraged workers to share social updates, company news, and job postings on their own accounts by using Avature’s custom link tool.
Results
To measure results, ABB turned to Avature’s reporting functionality. They found improved quality and efficiency at all stages of the recruiting process:
- LinkedIn Talent Brand Index nearly doubled.
Less than two years after beginning the campaign, more engineers in important markets recognize ABB’s employer brand, giving the company an advantage when reaching out to new candidates. - Time-to-fill decreased from 75-85 days in 2013 to 55-65 days in 2016 with a 3-year average of less than 70 days. Cost-per-hire decreased by 40%.
ABB beat its targeted time-to-fill of 60-70 days. Faster and less expensive hiring means that ABB’s projects continue as planned and manufacturing operations don’t need to be interrupted. - Hiring managers reported 83 percent satisfaction.
Avature enabled easy implementation of hiring manager surveys which revealed the high quality of new hires and positive experiences during the hiring process. - Recruiters averaged 120 phone screenings per quarter, measured by Avature’s built-in recruiter effectiveness reports.
Increased upper-funnel activity grew ABB’s talent pool, giving recruiters more qualified candidates to reach out to for future talent needs.
Meeting talent demand is critical to ABB’s business goals and recruiting top engineers is an important part of gaining a competitive advantage in the industry. By leveraging Avature CRM, ABB revamped its recruiting program to save costs while delivering better hires in less time. ABB plans to continue building on its success and will use Avature’s built-in reporting features to measure its ongoing progress.