How FOREFRONT International optimises technology in its recruitment process

In the recently concluded inaugural Asia Recruitment Awards, Malaysia, Accenture walked away with gold in the category of “best use of recruitment technology.” Silver was bagged by FOREFRONT International, in a ceremony where all participants’ entries were judged by a panel of judges heading HR for Asia’s most prominent organisations.

Accenture’s talent acquisition system (ATAS) leveraged Taleo recruitment software to digitise the full recruiting cycle, starting with a requisition for a position to fill, through to a candidate’s entire application and interview history.

Another complementary initiative is its mobile interview application, which familiarises candidates with a schedule of the interview, a Google map of the interview location, a brief introduction of Accenture, links to the interviewer and recruiter’s LinkedIn profiles, and interview tips.

As a result, the ATAS umbrella has allowed for cost reductions and shorter turnaround time, compared with the previous system that used discrete information sources that were often manually updated and prone to human error.

Recruiters at Accenture now have more time for other tasks as the new system eliminates the need to re-work applications or repeat previously completed steps. They are able to focus more on value-added tasks such as stakeholder management and candidate screenings.

The silver for this category, which saw the trophies presented by Nicholas Dhillon, head of talent acquisition and HR NCE champion, Malaysia & Singapore at Nestle S.A., went to FOREFRONT International.

The company’s strategy was led by a move to manage its career microsite better, in a bid to attract young talent looking for creative work opportunities – with focus on making it visually-oriented, relevant and actionable.

The programme saw HR, marketing communication, UX designers & IT support, and arts & creative teams coming together to build and communicate the messaging.

Consequently, the website’s “referral” traffic spiked sharply, as did the HR team’s ability to reach out to wider spectrum of job candidates.