Delegat's Wine Estate is a leading New Zealand winemaker enjoying global success with its Delegat's and Oyster Bay brands. In recent years the company has experienced a period of rapid growth both domestically and internationally, and now employs 140 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 traditions, the company fully understands that these attributes must be backed by a committed team of professionals and an efficient corporate business model.

Recruitment on a global scale
The rapid growth and success of Delegat’s prompted human resource manager Dave Piper to re-think and streamline another rapidly growing business function – recruitment.

Delegat's decided to launch an e-Recruitment platform for recruiting new employees, with a key goal of keeping pace with projected growth and the company's rapidly changing business environment.

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

While talent is mainly recruited locally, 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 (and 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’s, with word of mouth driving talent to the website from around the world.

Passive job seekers have been attracted from the USA (timely for Delegat’s future expansion into that region), 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,” says Piper, "whether they be specialists from within the industry or business professionals from the corporate market."

For that reason, he says Delegat's 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’s attract high calibre talent across the region by providing a wealth of detail about the company, its philosophy and history, to interest potential applicants.

Piper believes that as a rapidly growing New Zealand category leader in the international market, Delegat’s also has 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," he says, "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 described by Piper as 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 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.

Piper admits that some candidates are still seeking the instant gratification auto-apply approach to job hunting, but he says the “rapid fire CV” approach 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.

Centralised process
The centralised recruitment model used by Delegat’s 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.

Piper explains that the success based e-Recruitment solution offered by StaffCV provided Delegat’s 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’s 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’s
With the StaffCV-powered solution in place, Piper says Delegat's is ready for whatever the future brings. “We needed a dynamic solution to grow with us and reinforce the value of the employment brand," he says. "We now have a platform which supports us on a global level and delivers quality recruitment outcomes on which to build the business”.

For more information about this case study contact
Gayleen Robinson
09 921 3130
sales@staffcv.com
www.staffcv.com

July 2004