Growth a catalyst for move to online recruitment

Delegat is a leading New Zealand winemaker enjoying global success with its Delegat and Oyster Bay brands. In recent years the company has experienced a period of rapid growth both domestically and internationally, employing staff between its Henderson winery, corporate offices in Auckland’s Viaduct Harbour, vineyards in Marlborough and the Hawke’s Bay, as well as overseas sales subsidiaries in Australia and the UK.

While the company prides itself on strong family values and long standing estate traditions, it is clear that this successful formula is backed by a committed team of professionals and a corporate and efficient business model.

Recruitment on a global scale

The rapid growth and success of Delegat prompted its Manager of Human Resources to re-think and streamline another rapidly growing business function: recruitment. A decision was made to launch an e-Recruitment platform for recruiting new employees, with a key goal of keeping pace with projected growth and a changing environment.

The StaffCV-powered recruitment solution has offered Delegat the ability to readily expand its recruitment business to operate on a global stage, allowing ease of candidate management across all disciplines and all markets.

While talent is mainly recruited from local markets, the Human Resources function is centralised, and all placements are managed from Auckland by the New Zealand parent company. The new careers website and database solution has been completely implemented and managed within the HR division, removing any unnecessary pressure on Delegat’s small but busy IT team.

Employment Brand

The internet is now commonly used by job seekers to carry out research prior to job applications and interviews, so a company’s website provides a key opportunity to present the business as an attractive employment proposition.

Having an online ‘Career Opportunities’ presence has created that positive point of difference for Delegat, with word of mouth driving talent to the website from all over the globe. Passive job seekers have been attracted from the USA, as have expatriate New Zealanders based in London looking for opportunities either locally or for their return home.

In the extremely competitive wine industry, having the best people is seen to be critical to success. “Our environment is growing beyond the available supply of high calibre candidates, whether they be specialists from within the industry or business professionals from the corporate market” says Delegat’s HR Manager, “For that reason, we need to look beyond conventional marketing and management of job opportunities when it comes to the recruitment function in order to secure the best talent available”.

Delegat aims to attract interest from the highest calibre of talent across the region, and does this by providing a wealth of detail about the company, its philosophy and history to interest potential applicants.

The Delegat team believes that as a rapidly growing New Zealand category leader in the international market, they also have the advantage of being able to attract a growing number of individuals moving away from larger but less satisfying corporate organisations – people who are looking for more meaningful career opportunities. “We’ve seen the trend develop where top talent is more prepared to take a chance in shifting their career focus away from larger ineffective organisations to smaller, successful and more dynamic environments”.

“To test themselves, real performers want higher levels of collaboration, ownership and accountability than is possible for the larger incumbent brands in the market to provide, so we believe we offer a chance to make a real difference”.

Fit for Purpose

The electronic application process is an opportunity for candidates to “submit focussed, position relevant applications which do more to maximise candidate success, rather than hoping that a CV will simply speak for itself”.

Candidates are guided through questionnaires which can easily be customised to the exact requirements of each role, thereby eliminating much information which is often superfluous but common in less targeted recruitment processes. The standardisation of the information therefore makes candidate analysis and subsequent shortlisting a much more efficient exercise.

Delegat recognises that some candidates are still seeking the instant gratification auto-apply approach to job hunting, but finds that the “rapid fire CV” simply creates email clutter and does nothing to filter out those that aren’t serious about the role.

The consensus among candidates most interested in a role is that they are happy to spend a few extra minutes maximising their own potential by providing relevant information, and still feel they have plenty of opportunity to add their individual flair, personal preferences and professional aspirations.

Centralized process

The centralized recruitment model used by Delegat is favoured among a growing number of small to medium sized businesses, since technology now allows them to move away from reliance on recruitment agencies, and manage their own placements without attracting administrative burden.

These businesses often have small HR departments that are too busy to manage recruitment in a traditional paper-based fashion, but have a desire to lower costs by limiting the use of external agencies to very senior positions.

The ATS solution offered by StaffCV provided Delegat with easy entry into a new technology platform. “Our intention is to manage our growth by future-proofing our recruitment process, and compared to an agency, this model is very low risk”.

With a growing pool of pre-profiled talent in the database, Delegat can search for desirable attributes and competencies, track candidates that have applied for multiple roles, and invite highly ranked individuals into a recruitment process.

Relationships with candidates are managed with ease and efficiency, even across different time zones, with the system providing an immediacy of response that ensures people feel acknowledged and informed.

The Future of Recruitment for Delegat

“We needed a dynamic solution to grow with Delegat and reinforce the value of the employment brand. We now have a platform which supports us on a global level and delivers quality recruitment outcomes upon which to build the business”.
– Manager Human Resources, Delegat Limited