HALL OF FAME
Mallesons Stephen Jaques - 2007
TalentNet
Mallesons – a top 50 international commercial law firm with offices in eight locations – has developed TalentNet, a web based solution for recruitment management. In an industry with 20% annual turnover of employees, competition among law firms for attracting the most talented people is fierce. TalentNet is Mallesons’ strategic response to this competitive labor market.
TalentNet has vastly improved the firm’s recruitment outcome while reducing costs. Providing the candidate with an engaging experience is TalentNet’s most striking achievement. TalentNet addresses the desire of today’s recruits for “self-service” solutions and “personal” touch points. By halving the time to recruit, candidates choose Mallesons ahead of its competitors, driving increased acceptance rates for vacancies.
TalentNet manages all internal and external processes in the recruitment lifecycle, from the requisition through to the final appointment. TalentNet has removed most of the administrative overhead in the recruitment process. www.mallesons.com
Question & Answer with Derek Jaques and Rupert Hanson
What goal were you trying to achieve?
The goal was to improve markedly the firm’s recruitment outcomes by giving recruits an outstanding recruitment experience. At the same time, we wanted to dramatically shorten the recruitment process and reduce waste and costs.
Why was it important?
To provide a competitive advantage in a highly competitive local and global market for qualified professionals.
To provide a superior experience for candidates, particularly tech-savvy Gen-Y applicants.
To provide a single, unified and integrated “one firm” approach to recruitment that was based on largely transparent and paperless processes, many of which are automated.
To reduce cost/overhead of recruitment by streamlining the recruitment lifecycle and better aligning it with the needs of the firm.
To improve the quality of recruitment data analysis and reporting based on an increasingly rich talent pool database.
To take time out of the recruitment cycle for both the candidate and the firm.
To be first in the market to make offers to the best available talent.
How did you gather the internal support, resources and personnel to make it happen?
Persuading the executive to develop an in-house recruiting solution was not difficult, because the existing third party web-based recruiting system was failing to meet the most basic requirements. The development upgrade path for this system was limited and costly, and the expiry of the existing contractual relationship focused attention on the issue.
Other commercially available recruitment solutions were expensive and unable to meet the firm’s recruitment objectives. A business case supported the development of TalentNet.
Was there resistance?
No — to the contrary, there was a sense of anticipation.
What was the most satisfying aspect of making your project a reality?
The short time that it took from launch to realize and capture demonstrable benefits and to deliver highly favourable recruitment outcomes, while recouping our development costs in under one year.
How have you measured the success of your innovation over time?
For example, time taken out of the recruitment cycle:
62% reduction in time from receiving a candidate’s application to scheduling an interview (from 16 to 6 days for lateral recruits)
53% reduction in time from receiving a candidate’s application to scheduling an interview (from 44 to 21 days for graduate recruits)
48% reduction in time from advertising a position to filling a position (from 48 to 25 days for lateral recruits).
For example, measuring use of TalentNet (October 2005 to August 2007):
received 26,000 applications uploaded over 38,000 attachments
placed over 1,400 advertisements
sent over 17,000 e-mails
processed over 62,000 searches
averaged 100 applications submitted each week
averaged 4,000 web pages viewed each day
more than 250 applications submitted in a single day.
How have your lawyers, staff and clients responded to this innovative accomplishment?
Very positively. Partner members of their recruitment committees appreciate TalentNet’s paperless environment and enriched, transparent and accurate data and reports. Recruitment staff find TalentNet an invaluable productivity and collaboration tool through the optimization of business processes, better micro-controls and standardization, and increased oversight and visibility of actions and progress.
What has been the reaction from your competitors, or from the local legal community and media?
The 2007 InnovAction Award for TalentNet generated some local comment and coverage in the specialist legal publications. For competitors, it brought into focus the need to concentrate on putting in place strategies and systems to be competitive in the recruitment of the best available talent.
What advice do you have for others who might wish to make something new happen in their law practice or firm?
When something is broken, it sometimes pays to replace it rather than fix it.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers about your experience with this project?
TalentNet is Mallesons’ strategic response to what it views as fundamental and irreversible change occurring in local and global professional services labour markets. New entrants in to the workforce are well credentialed, multi-disciplined, highly mobile, borderless and global in their outlook for opportunities and fulfilment of their aspirations. This is leading to an increasingly competitive “talent war” and the decline of the size and quality of accessible talent pools for professional service firms.
TalentNet seeks to be attractive and fulfilling to this technologically aware and electronically interconnected generation comfortable with independent, flexible self-reliant interfaces, fast communications and streamlined processes. Professional service firms need to put in place tools, systems and processes that will attract and match the “best and brightest” candidates from the available talent pool before their competitors can identify and woo them.
In TalentNet, Mallesons has a tool that is able to find, identify, contact, select and offer employment to an applicant at a speed, and level of candidate satisfaction, that is unmatched by most in-house HR departments and out-sourced recruiters.
Array
(
[Winners] => Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[PeopleID] => 23
[FirstName] => New Family Organization
[LastName] => - 2009
[Title] => Family, Justice and Law Initiative
)
[1] => Array
(
[PeopleID] => 22
[FirstName] => Practical Law Company
[LastName] => - 2009
[Title] => Creating Efficiency for Business Lawyers
)
[2] => Array
(
[PeopleID] => 19
[FirstName] => Novus Law
[LastName] => - 2008
[Title] => Documenting the E-Discovery Process
)
[3] => Array
(
[PeopleID] => 20
[FirstName] => Mallesons Stephen Jaques
[LastName] => - 2008
[Title] => PeopleFinder
)
[4] => Array
(
[PeopleID] => 9
[FirstName] => Holland and Hart LLP
[LastName] => - 2007
[Title] => Holland & Hart Foundation
)
[5] => Array
(
[PeopleID] => 10
[FirstName] => DLA Piper US LLP
[LastName] => - 2007
[Title] => New Perimeter
)
[6] => Array
(
[PeopleID] => 11
[FirstName] => Mallesons Stephen Jaques
[LastName] => - 2007
[Title] => TalentNet
)
[7] => Array
(
[PeopleID] => 12
[FirstName] => Raskin Peter Rubin & Simon LLP
[LastName] => - 2007
[Title] => Association of Media and Entertainment Counsel
)
[8] => Array
(
[PeopleID] => 13
[FirstName] => DLA Piper Rudnick
[LastName] => - 2005
[Title] => Venture Pipeline
)
[9] => Array
(
[PeopleID] => 14
[FirstName] => Simpson Grierson
[LastName] => - 2005
[Title] =>
)
[10] => Array
(
[PeopleID] => 15
[FirstName] => Masons
[LastName] => - 2004
[Title] => OUT Law
)
[11] => Array
(
[PeopleID] => 18
[FirstName] => Blank Rome LLP
[LastName] => - 2004
[Title] => Comprehensive Training Program
)
[12] => Array
(
[PeopleID] => 16
[FirstName] => The Law Chambers of Nicholas Critelli, P.C.
[LastName] => - 2004
[Title] => Work space design
)
[13] => Array
(
[PeopleID] => 17
[FirstName] => Wragge & Co.
[LastName] => - 2004
[Title] => Cost accountability
)
)
[Winner] => Array
(
[FirstName] => Mallesons Stephen Jaques
[LastName] => - 2007
[Title] => TalentNet
[MainNarrative] =>
Mallesons – a top 50 international commercial law firm with offices in eight locations – has developed TalentNet, a web based solution for recruitment management. In an industry with 20% annual turnover of employees, competition among law firms for attracting the most talented people is fierce. TalentNet is Mallesons’ strategic response to this competitive labor market.
TalentNet has vastly improved the firm’s recruitment outcome while reducing costs. Providing the candidate with an engaging experience is TalentNet’s most striking achievement. TalentNet addresses the desire of today’s recruits for “self-service” solutions and “personal” touch points. By halving the time to recruit, candidates choose Mallesons ahead of its competitors, driving increased acceptance rates for vacancies.
TalentNet manages all internal and external processes in the recruitment lifecycle, from the requisition through to the final appointment. TalentNet has removed most of the administrative overhead in the recruitment process. www.mallesons.com
Question & Answer with Derek Jaques and Rupert Hanson
What goal were you trying to achieve?
The goal was to improve markedly the firm’s recruitment outcomes by giving recruits an outstanding recruitment experience. At the same time, we wanted to dramatically shorten the recruitment process and reduce waste and costs.
Why was it important?
To provide a competitive advantage in a highly competitive local and global market for qualified professionals.
To provide a superior experience for candidates, particularly tech-savvy Gen-Y applicants.
To provide a single, unified and integrated “one firm” approach to recruitment that was based on largely transparent and paperless processes, many of which are automated.
To reduce cost/overhead of recruitment by streamlining the recruitment lifecycle and better aligning it with the needs of the firm.
To improve the quality of recruitment data analysis and reporting based on an increasingly rich talent pool database.
To take time out of the recruitment cycle for both the candidate and the firm.
To be first in the market to make offers to the best available talent.
How did you gather the internal support, resources and personnel to make it happen?
Persuading the executive to develop an in-house recruiting solution was not difficult, because the existing third party web-based recruiting system was failing to meet the most basic requirements. The development upgrade path for this system was limited and costly, and the expiry of the existing contractual relationship focused attention on the issue.
Other commercially available recruitment solutions were expensive and unable to meet the firm’s recruitment objectives. A business case supported the development of TalentNet.
Was there resistance?
No — to the contrary, there was a sense of anticipation.
What was the most satisfying aspect of making your project a reality?
The short time that it took from launch to realize and capture demonstrable benefits and to deliver highly favourable recruitment outcomes, while recouping our development costs in under one year.
How have you measured the success of your innovation over time?
For example, time taken out of the recruitment cycle:
62% reduction in time from receiving a candidate’s application to scheduling an interview (from 16 to 6 days for lateral recruits)
53% reduction in time from receiving a candidate’s application to scheduling an interview (from 44 to 21 days for graduate recruits)
48% reduction in time from advertising a position to filling a position (from 48 to 25 days for lateral recruits).
For example, measuring use of TalentNet (October 2005 to August 2007):
received 26,000 applications uploaded over 38,000 attachments
placed over 1,400 advertisements
sent over 17,000 e-mails
processed over 62,000 searches
averaged 100 applications submitted each week
averaged 4,000 web pages viewed each day
more than 250 applications submitted in a single day.
How have your lawyers, staff and clients responded to this innovative accomplishment?
Very positively. Partner members of their recruitment committees appreciate TalentNet’s paperless environment and enriched, transparent and accurate data and reports. Recruitment staff find TalentNet an invaluable productivity and collaboration tool through the optimization of business processes, better micro-controls and standardization, and increased oversight and visibility of actions and progress.
What has been the reaction from your competitors, or from the local legal community and media?
The 2007 InnovAction Award for TalentNet generated some local comment and coverage in the specialist legal publications. For competitors, it brought into focus the need to concentrate on putting in place strategies and systems to be competitive in the recruitment of the best available talent.
What advice do you have for others who might wish to make something new happen in their law practice or firm?
When something is broken, it sometimes pays to replace it rather than fix it.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers about your experience with this project?
TalentNet is Mallesons’ strategic response to what it views as fundamental and irreversible change occurring in local and global professional services labour markets. New entrants in to the workforce are well credentialed, multi-disciplined, highly mobile, borderless and global in their outlook for opportunities and fulfilment of their aspirations. This is leading to an increasingly competitive “talent war” and the decline of the size and quality of accessible talent pools for professional service firms.
TalentNet seeks to be attractive and fulfilling to this technologically aware and electronically interconnected generation comfortable with independent, flexible self-reliant interfaces, fast communications and streamlined processes. Professional service firms need to put in place tools, systems and processes that will attract and match the “best and brightest” candidates from the available talent pool before their competitors can identify and woo them.
In TalentNet, Mallesons has a tool that is able to find, identify, contact, select and offer employment to an applicant at a speed, and level of candidate satisfaction, that is unmatched by most in-house HR departments and out-sourced recruiters.
[Images] => Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[ImagePath] => http://www.innovactionaward.com/media/pnc/4/media.154.jpg
)
)
[Ads] => Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[ResourceImage] => http://www.innovactionaward.com/media/pnc/3/media.163.jpg
[ResourceTitle] => Ad-LexisNexis
[ResourceURL] => http://www.lexisnexis.com
)
[1] => Array
(
[ResourceImage] => http://www.innovactionaward.com/media/pnc/0/media.160.jpg
[ResourceTitle] => Ad-Inside Counsel
[ResourceURL] => http://www.insidecounsel.com
)
)
)
)
