HEC081

Volume 12
Issue 3
September 2014

Recruiting Faster: (B) Change Management at SDL

Case prepared by Debolina DUTTA1

Introduction
Mohua Sen, divisional recruitment manager (DRM) for the financial services division of SDL, a
$4 billion IT services company headquartered in Bangalore with nearly 80,000 employees, had
been mandated by her business unit manager to reduce the recruitment cycle time for hiring
external candidates. SDL’s talent acquisition function was headed by a vice-president, to whom
business unit DRMs reported. In addition to the business unit DRMs, campus recruitment and
contract staffing were managed by two independent DRMs. Annual recruitment across all
business units, including campus and contract hiring, varied between 8,000 and 20,000 per year.

The recruitment cycle time for permanent hires was running at 100 days, including the notice
period to be served after SDL made an offer. With a minimum $200 in additional revenues to be
accrued per day per hire by expediting lateral hires, and with the financial services division alone
requiring annual hires of 1,000 to 1,200, it made great business sense to speed up the recruitment
process in a consistent and sustainable manner. This was easier said than done, however.

The high variability in skill demand along with the lack of visibility of fulfilment through the
internal pool of employees resulted in increased bench costs from wrong hires. In addition,
seasonal hiring patterns, the unwillingness of technical panels to conduct interviews on time, the
reluctance of candidates to proactively provide the required documentation in a profitable job
market, the mandatory compliance requirement of face-to-face interviews, and the restriction of
interview scheduling to weekends were just some of the challenges making shrinking reduction
of the recruitment cycle time a herculean task. The hiring managers responsible for technical
selection felt no sense of urgency to complete the interviews quickly, resulting in a pattern of
weekend interviewing. The selection stages were sequential, so recruiters were unable to process
subsequent stages until earlier ones were complete. The habits of the various stakeholders
(technical panels interviewing candidates and even recruiters) was firmly entrenched, so for
stakeholder behaviour to change, any process innovation would require a comprehensive plan.

1
Debolina Dutta is a Ph.D. candidate at the Indian Institute of Management, Indore, India.
© HEC Montréal 2014
All rights reserved for all countries. Any translation or alteration in any form whatsoever is prohibited.
The International Journal of Case Studies in Management is published on-line (http://www.hec.ca/en/case_centre/ijcsm/), ISSN 1911-2599.
This case is intended to be used as the framework for an educational discussion and does not imply any judgement on the
administrative situation presented. Deposited under number 9 40 2014 007B with the HEC Montréal Case Centre, 3000, chemin
de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine, Montréal (Québec) Canada H3T 2A7.
This document is authorized for educator review use only by Sidra Irfan, University of the Punjab until Apr 2021. Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright.
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 Recruiting Faster: (B) Change Management at SDL

Eureka!
After brainstorming with her team, Mohua believed she had found a way to reduce the
recruitment cycle time. She studied the timelines for the entire recruitment process and the
various stages of the selection process. The two bottlenecks were the wait for the technical
interview and the post-offer joining time (candidate’s notice period). The second was beyond the
scope of the recruitment team or of process improvement in general since the candidates had to
serve their notice periods at their respective organizations. The service time variability seen
across the quarters was also attributed primarily to the variation in technical interview times.
Still, Mohua felt that just focusing on improving the timelines of the technical interview might
not provide optimal results.

After obtaining the consent of the recruitment head to conduct a pilot study, Mohua asked
members of the quality assurance team to monitor the team’s performance on a weekly basis and
suggest improvements. The quality assurance team was a specialized division of the company
that advised on and monitored all Six-Sigma, lean, and process improvement projects designed to
maximize efficiency and reduce costs across all functions and business units. In addition to
validating the live data for Mohua’s project, this team provided input that helped her to further
reduce the cycle.

Mohua split the recruitment process into the following stages: sourcing candidates, scheduling
interviews, the technical interview, the HR interview, document collection, the offer rollout, and
the wait for the candidate to join. After discussion with the recruitment team, she determined the
optimum timeline for each stage. The principles of control charts were used to determine the
upper limit for each process stage. The best- and worst-case timelines for completing each sub-
task were established jointly by the recruiters. Each sub-task was then assigned an upper limit for
completion. Every recruiter was asked to record the actual timeline for each candidate during the
recruitment process. To ensure their buy-in, the recruiters were told about the cost-benefit
analysis and the target of reducing both the cycle time and the standard deviation so they would
adhere to the process and report accurate data. Mohua’s entire recruitment team agreed this was
the best approach under the circumstances and was excited to try it out.

The pilot project was launched, and the weekly data for each recruiter processing any candidate
in the system was recorded and shared with the quality assurance team (responsible for Six
Sigma and quality initiatives across the organization). Cases of non-adherence to the control chart
timelines were discussed during a weekly review, and suggestions and mechanisms for achieving
timeline adherence were proposed by other recruiters.

Each candidate was tagged against a specific hiring request. The start date of the request
determined the upper limits for the three critical stages of the technical interview, the HR
interview, and the offer release. As the recruiters were responsible for ensuring that time limits
were not surpassed during each stage, they encouraged the technical panels to complete the
interviews via Skype, videoconferencing, or face to face as quickly as possible. It was generally
possible to schedule two or three interviews each day during the early morning or late evening,
thereby avoiding weekend interviews. Weekly reviews of the process charts helped to maintain

© HEC 2
Montréal
awareness of adherence and compliance among the recruiters, ensuring that the sense of urgency
for a speedy recruitment process was sustained (see Exhibit).

After two quarters, approximately 1,600 candidates were in various stages of the recruitment
process, including 170 who had joined. Some were still ‘works in progress’ in the recruitment
pipeline. However, Mohua was reasonably convinced that her approach would work. After all,
after six months of running the trial project, the average cycle time for the 170 hires was 50 days
with a standard deviation of 18 days!

Absolutely delighted by the success of the pilot project, Mohua decided to present her success
story to the entire recruitment function at the next weekly review meeting of all the DRMs and
the recruitment head.

The DRM Review Meeting

Together with the quality assurance team, which had validated the data and the process, Mohua
presented the details of the pilot study to the entire recruitment function: her peers (the other
DRMs) and the recruitment head. After explaining the rationale behind the project and the
methodology used, Mohua discussed the importance of the cost savings achieved. When the
recruitment head opened the floor for discussion, the reactions came thick and fast.

Vivek, DRM for the testing division, was the first to express his concerns.

“Do you realize that if the benchmark was set at 50 days for lateral recruitment, the SLA (service
level agreement) for lateral and contract recruitment would be almost the same? 1 This would
increase the demand on the lateral recruitment team with no additional supporting head count.
After all, the business team would prefer lateral hires to contract hires. I’m not sure if there would
be movement from the contract recruitment team to the lateral recruitment team. Without the
promise of an additional head count, there would be a performance dip, and the recruiters would
be unable to meet SLAs since they couldn’t cope with the additional demand. I, for one, don’t
want to reset expectations for my business without the assurance of additional resources to handle
the diverted recruitment demand.”

Ravi, the DRM for the technology infrastructure team, chimed in: “Mohua, the process you
followed in your pilot study makes unrealistic demands on recruiters in terms of data recording.
Recruiters would become data entry operators and not be doing actual recruitment! This would
divert their focus from a ‘quality’ experience for both candidates and company stakeholders.”

Mohua countered that the quality of the experience was enhanced for all stakeholders, i.e., the
candidates and the company, since all benefited from a faster and more efficient process. She also
noted that her approach was only one of the possible routes to a faster cycle time, which provided
substantial savings for the organization. So the main goal of reducing the recruitment cycle time
should not be forgotten.

1
The contract recruitment SLA was 45 days at SDL.
Suchira, the DRM for the ERP solutions division, argued that “ERP solutions hiring requires a
higher level of niche skills. You can’t expect us to hire those niche skills in such short
timelines!”1 Mohua replied that, in the process she had followed, greater allowance had been
made for niche skills, so the system was still feasible. She again noted that more than one road
leads to Rome, and, whatever approach was chosen, the goal of reducing the recruitment cycle
time should be pursued by all DRMs.

Manoj, the head of campus recruitment, was very worried by the pilot project. “If all recruiters
across all divisions started following the method your team has developed, I would be unable to
find recruiters to support campus recruitment. We know that all division recruiters are expected
to contribute to the campus recruitment process, which kicks off toward the end of Q2
(September) and continues through Q3 and Q4 (March). If reducing the cycle time became their
major focus, many recruiters would opt out of participating in campus recruitment. Then who
would do the campus hiring, and where would I find recruiters?”

Mohua acknowledged that her pilot project had been conducted during the “non-campus”
quarters and did not have an answer for Manoj.

The divisional recruitment heads were peers of Mohua, who was relatively new to the
organization. Mohua began to realize that most division heads were protective of the opaqueness
of their performance and did not want to share micro-level performance data with the quality
assurance team and the company stakeholders. Was the underlying reason for rejecting this new
approach the ‘not-invented-here’ syndrome, or something else? Could most of the reasons and
arguments cited for non-adoption be verified by conducting similar pilot projects in the other
divisions? If so, why were they not being done?

The resulting impasse relegated the suggested process improvement to the realm of academic
study.

Mohua knew it was possible to recruit faster. She wondered what she could have done to have the
process accepted and implemented, to the great benefit of the company. How could she have
achieved better buy-in and institutionalized a faster recruitment process?

2014-08-21

1
Niche skills normally constituted approximately 10% of hiring by volume. However, some divisions had a greater proportion of
‘niche’ skills than others. While there were ‘niche’ or ‘difficult to hire’ skills in every division, there was rarely commonality of
those skills across divisions, so it was not possible to share the resume pool.
 Exhibit
UCL Chart

TECH CYCLE TIME

Alert Count for UCL
Name of Avg Tech cycle
Recruiter EXCEED WITHIN Grand Total time
Ashish 5 37 42 7.33
Deniska 4 4 3
Gautam 55 55 5.57
Issac 8 10 18 6.56
Nirmala 11 11 3.75
Padmanabhan 4 49 53 5.64
Samia 8 47 55 7.38
Trushna 2 2 5
Grand Total 25 215 240 5.53

OFFER CYCLE TIME

Alert Count for UCL

Name of Avg. Offer cycle
Recruiter EXCEED WITHIN Grand Total time
Ashish 15 27 42 8
Deniska 4 4
Gautam 6 27 33 11
Issac 8 8 16 18
Nirmala 6 5 11 13
Padmanabhan 5 19 24 13
Samia 8 47 55 7
Trushna 1 1 7
Grand Total 52 134 186 11

JOIN CYCLE TIME

Alert Count for UCL

Name of Avg. Join cycle
Recruiter EXCEED WITHIN Grand Total time
Ashish 7 6 13 37
Gautam 11 16 27 38
Issac 8 8 52
Padmanabhan 1 15 16 29
Samia 2 2 22
Trushna 1 1 43
Grand Total 28 39 67 37
 Question
Answer the following question. Please note and strictly follow the word limit.

1. This case offers an important example of the issue of effective change management and helps explain
why over 70% of change management initiatives in organizations fail. We have discussed multiple
approaches and models which can be used to demonstrate how change management should be driven
at SDL. As an example, John P. Kotter in his famous work, “Leading Change: Why Transformation
Efforts Fail”, has emphasized the significance of following the eight-step organizational change
model. The comprehensiveness of this model should allow you to apply your learning from various
concepts covered during the course of Change Management to the case study. The following table
provides a template for step-by-step application of Kotter’s change management model. You are
required to fill this table based on the information and your analysis from the case study.
(Word limit: 700-800 words)

Stage Action Needed Actions by Mohua Sen What should have been
done
1. Establish a sense of
urgency
2. Create a guiding coalition
3. Develop a vision and
strategy
4. Communicate the change
vision
5. Empower others to act on
the vision
6. Plan for and create short-
term wins
7. Consolidate gains and
produce more change
8. Institutionalize new
approaches