Customer Stories 
Summary
In the past two years, BMC’s business has grown exponentially with a 105 percent increase in hires. Looking at the current talent landscape, they soon realized they were facing fierce competition and a difficulty in converting qualified candidates into the new hires they needed.
With a higher volume to cope with, they were soon experiencing:
- An eight-day increase in time to offer.
- A 122 percent increase in decline rate after offer acceptance.
BMC quickly understood it was time to go back to the drawing board. They weren’t getting offers into candidates’ hands as quickly as they needed to and the knock-on impact was missing out on top talent late in the hiring process – an expensive and frustrating reality for recruiters and ultimately, the business.
With all this information in hand, they embarked on a comprehensive overhaul of their onboarding process, focused on tackling key moments in the transition between applicant and new hire. Their new process would be divided into pre-offer, onboarding and post-joining.
Looking to provide a consistent experience throughout while keeping personalization top of mind, their three-phased onboarding success was due to, well, three main reasons. Keep on reading to tap into BMC’s insights.
About BMC
Founded in 1980, BMC has more than 40 years of experience in enterprise IT leadership. They’ve enabled 86 percent of the Forbes Global 50 to run and reinvent their digital transformation processes.
With more than 6,000 employees in 40 countries, BMC continues to provide industry-leading automation, operation and service management solutions that help organizations become autonomous digital enterprises.
Understand that Onboarding Is More Than a One-step Process
When does onboarding start? When does it end? Is effective onboarding providing a portal where new hires can sign compulsory documentation ahead of time? Does an intensive first week of training cut it? Which moments will define if a candidate feels adrift or at ease when joining a new company?
When it comes to talent processes, no two organizations have the same needs. In the case of BMC, they came to understand that their onboarding process was more than just a one-time step in which employees access an interface to upload documents. As such, BMC decided to create a comprehensive process that included:
- Pre-offer: extending an offer to candidates as quickly as possible so other companies don’t get there first.
- Automated offer and contract letters.
- Fully online offer acceptance process.
- Personalized welcome videos.
- Automated background checking.
- Onboarding: setting up a tailored portal and centralizing all relevant information for new hires to feel like part of the team prior to their firts day.
- Onboarding tasks.
- Information about the role.
- Benefits tab.
- What to expect during the first week.
- Integration with the BMC new hire setup tool.
- Post-joining: analyzing the candidate’s experience to identify any areas for improvement and continuously enhance the process.
- Surveys regarding overall experience.
- Referrals.
“The hiring world has become candidate driven, with companies competing more than ever to hire the best talent. For BMC, it’s no different. Our hiring process needs to be customer-centric and this means we are investing in the transcendent customer experience.”
Jen Corio
Global Recruitment Operations & Delivery Manager at BMC Software
Offer a Memorable Experience
The first 90 days after hiring are crucial when it comes to engaging employees. So saying that organizations must create an impactful onboarding experience in order to achieve long-term retention isn’t so far-fetched.
“The onboarding experience is a partnership between manager, recruiter and HR. We wanted to ensure that we were consistent in the experience globally, but we wanted to keep it personalized and with a local feel to our pending hire.”
Jen Corio
Global Recruitment Operations & Delivery Manager at BMC Software
During pre-offer, BMC made sure to create a bond between the company and its new hires in several ways. This included webinars with the leaders of the company, a series of personalized emails starting 45 days prior to their start date and much more. With this level of personalization, new joiners are able to dive right into the onboarding process, what it will be like working at BMC, the company values and any resource that may help them prepare for the next step in their career.
“If we don’t create that bond whilst they’re waiting to join, it’s very likely that other companies are.”
Jen Corio
Global Recruitment Operations & Delivery Manager at BMC Software
With the onboarding phase itself, BMC leveraged a branded portal with tailored and dynamic content for each particular hire. Instead of the typical silence post signing, new joiners are kept engaged through welcome videos from executives, resources related to their new role, useful links, location-related content and relevant company information.
Creating a memorable experience helps new hires feel confident that they’ve made the right choice when accepting a future employer’s offer. But it has another huge benefit for organizations. By setting up new hires for success prior to day one and giving them the visibility they require to feel prepared and comfortable in their new role and the company, time to productivity decreases.
Though the overall candidate experience was BMC’s main priority, they were also determined to enhance the experience for all other stakeholders in the process. Reducing manual efforts for recruiters through automation is just one way this transcendent “customer centricity” comes to life.
“To deliver the best possible customer experience, we use Avature automation & AI to optimize and deliver on business agility. Using many of the Avature solutions and integrations, we’ve been able to minimize manual efforts.”
Jen Corio
Global Recruitment Operations & Delivery Manager at BMC Software
Measure Your Success
“It’s important to consistently evaluate your processes to ensure that you’re providing value. The main motivation for this? The world is ever-changing. For example, the flexibility from working from home is a much bigger priority for your hires today compared to what it may have been three years ago.”
Jen Corio
Global Recruitment Operations & Delivery Manager at BMC Software
During their post-joining phase, BMC leverages surveys to gather real-time feedback from new hires themselves. Using custom reports to analyze this data, they have been able to identify what’s working well, as well as room for improvement in their process. One example? They’ve been able to identify that their decline rate has dropped to 18 percent across 950 hires.
The positive impact they’ve been able to measure shows the importance of creating a meaningful experience, but also following through with process enhancements that derive from that feedback. “Run and reinvent” is not just BMC’s company motto; it’s their mindset of continuous improvement. As the team consistently enhances their onboarding process moving forward, the benefits for BMC and its new hires will only increase.
“To tie our customer experience and business agility together we need actionable insights to ensure we’re delivering value. Avature custom report builder has been a large part of this; the ability to get to the data fast but also have ability to create new reports has meant we have moved with business needs and provide insights to not just our TA functions but Linkedin, our HCM, and BMC custom tools, for example ordering IT equipment for new starters.”
Jen Corio
Global Recruitment Operations & Delivery Manager at BMC Software
