Case Study - Technology Manufacturer
Sourcing Bandwidth On-Demand (SBOD)
Samsung leverages Q4B's Sourcing Bandwidth on Demand solution to augment its existing university recruiting efforts and exceed its hiring goals
- Client Profile/Background
- Samsung Austin Semiconductor (SAS) in Austin, Texas, a US-chartered company owned by Samsung Electronics, is one of the most advanced semiconductor fabrication plants in the world. Samsung Austin is a leading producer of Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) chips most commonly used in personal computers, workstations and servers. In May 2003, Samsung Electronics announced a three-year, $500 million expansion and upgrade of its Austin-based facility. This new 34,000 square foot expansion of their manufacturing area equipped the plant to produce next generation nano-scale semiconductor memory technology.
- Business Challenge
- SAS is no stranger to university recruiting and as a result already had a successful engineering student recruiting program in place. But with the expansion of the fabrication plant came a spike in demand for qualified engineering hires - a recruiting need that dramatically exceeded SAS's internal sourcing and screening capabilities. To adequately staff the new facility's start-up, SAS needed to hire 130 engineers for the spring recruiting season and simply didn't have the capacity to source and screen these candidates themselves within the allotted timeframe. Additionally, SAS was also battling a typical interview-to-hire ratio of 20 percent. To further compound the challenge, recent engineering graduates are in extremely high demand in today's market, making the competition for the best students that much fiercer.
- Strategy/Solution
The HR team at SAS knew they needed a recruitment process outsourcing and consulting firm that could design, implement and manage a college sourcing solution that served as a seamless extension of SAS's current recruiting effort. After interviewing several firms, Q4B, inc. (Quantum Solutions for Business) was chosen based on their Sourcing Bandwidth On-Demand (SBOD) solution and their ability to seamlessly serve as an extension of SAS's current recruiting efforts.
Serena Townsend, Senior Human Resources Specialist, Samsung Austin Semiconductor explains, "Q4B was able to bolt on to our existing, well-defined college recruiting process. We outlined our specific needs and they were able to supplement our resources quickly without our needing to make many internal changes."
A Q4B team devised a fully integrated sourcing strategy that was executed over a five-month period, January - May. Originally, SAS only had enough resources to be on-site at eight schools, but by leveraging Q4B's Sourcing Bandwidth On-Demand solution, together they were able to screen resume books from 39 universities, in addition to augmenting efforts at five of the eight universities with which SAS currently worked. Q4B was able to dig much deeper than previous internal SAS efforts.
- Results
Over the five-month period, Q4B sourced 3500 resumes using various sourcing tactics and tracked candidates with Q4B's applicant tracking system. From this pool, Q4B choose 1800 candidates to screen with detailed phone interviews and submitted 300 potentials to SAS for interviews. SAS narrowed the field to 214 candidates for on-site interviews and extended offers to half of this talent pool. In the end, 72 recent engineering graduates came through Q4B and accepted positions with SAS, augmenting the 60 that Samsung brought on board using its traditional methods.
"Q4B took the time to truly understand our target candidates and were very receptive to continually revising sourcing strategies to ensure that we all met our hiring goals," offered Townsend.
Q4B was able to exceed SAS's sourcing volume expectations by accurately understanding Samsung's requirements up front and effectively screening candidates, allowing for maximum interviewing efficiency. As a result of Q4B's more efficient screening processes, SAS was able to improve their interview-to-hire ratio from 20 percent to 33 percent. The average cost-per-hire ended up around $2,700.