New Client: Barclays

Barclays UK Retail Banking, which employs more than 32,000 staff across the UK, is to outsource its process management of permanent recruitment for experienced hires up to senior management level.

In consultation with Barclays, AMS will develop innovative sourcing approaches and provide a candidate management service up to the point of offer. This will allow the Barclays HR function to deliver a best-in-class, holistic approach to resourcing through a consistent platform and streamlined processes.

Through AMS, Barclays will continue to develop its recruitment and employee brands in line with their overall growth and people strategy. The service will go live through a phased deployment between August and October 2008, with 50 percent of the AMS team based at Barclays office in Coventry.

Andrew Rolfe, Head of Resourcing at Barclays UK Retail, comments “Over the last year our resourcing function has been reviewing all processes and practices to ensure we make use of new and innovative ways to access, employ and retain the best talent to serve our customers. The new approach will provide a range of benefits for our candidates and suppliers. In particular, we aim to provide an efficient mechanism by which to process over 100,000 applications per annum and greatly improve the ease by which talented individuals can secure a great job with us. The success of our business lies with our employees and the robustness of our recruitment operation is a key factor in continually improving our skills base”.

A key element of the transformation will include the implementation of an eRecruitment system from talent management company Taleo. This will enable Barclays to more effectively manage, process and record the sheer volume of job applicants it receives each year, process candidate information efficiently and reduce the overall time-to-hire.

Vanessa Byrnes, Practice Director at Alexander Mann Solutions says, “This partnership with Barclays demonstrates the innovative approach companies are taking when it comes to managing the hiring process. Many are looking for increasingly efficient ways to select staff, which includes improvements to the consistency of hiring and the experience for the candidate, whilst allowing them to manage the volume of applicants and make the best use of their resourcing function. Through our partnership, AMS is able to support Barclays goal to provide a best-in-class resourcing service that delivers value to the business.”

Working in partnership with clients to consolidate and transform their recruitment and resourcing processes, AMS delivers a full range of RPO services. These include executive and experienced hiring operations, graduate and MBA recruitment programmes, contract and temporary workforce management solutions, internal mobility, redeployment and outplacement.