Client Challenge

The U.S. Division of a Global Retailer was falling short of its aggressive recruiting goals in critical retail-specific leadership and flagship store management roles.

Further, owing to low turnover, Division leadership felt that the group had lost touch with the external talent market in their industry and sought to develop benchmarks for talent practices among their key talent competitors.

Our Solution

DoubleStar’s Research Team partnered with our client’s HR leaders to identify target talent pools in key competitors, build targeted recruiting databases, conduct research to determine talent practices (including compensation models, promotional paths, career development opportunities, and benefits program details), and develop talent maps of competitors’ organization structures and hierarchies.

To gather this data, our team used web-based sources to identify potential candidates, executed outreach and engagement initiatives, conducted one-on-one interviews, and integrated talent information from a variety of external sources to develop the following deliverables:

• A talent map of this client’s top 5 competitors, including org structures and complete lists of employee names and titles
• Job descriptions and compensation structures and practices for all targeted roles
• Talent management information for all roles and career paths
• A recruiting database of prequalified prospective talent for use in current and future direct-recruiting initiatives

Business Impacts

Our client utilized the talent management information to adjust their employment proposition to become a more attractive destination for top talent looking to accelerate their careers. They also adjusted internal talent management practices to increase their market competitiveness, resulting in increased employee satisfaction and engagement and a decrease in annual attrition rates in key roles.

The recruiting database was used as the centerpiece of a recruiting initiative that targeted filling 30 key roles in the following 4 months. Sixty-five percent of those hires were sourced through the database, saving an estimated $450,000 in agency fees and other recruiting costs.