Outsourcing recruitment for dysfunctional hiring

During 2010 I worked with a multinational technology client filling several critical roles across Europe, varying in seniority from Account Managers to Senior EMEA Directors. The firm was growing ferociously fast, and needed to fill close to 200 positions across EMEA. This company has a highly visible brand, and is proud to have been nominated one of the best companies to work for by Fortune magazine some time ago. Typically for companies growing so fast processes by times were lacking, coordination failures were common, and HR was under huge pressure to fill the open positions in time. We managed an excellent run of placements in Germany and Switzerland based on the close relationship with some key stakeholders in staffing and HR.

İn November 2010 the EMEA HR Director resigned, followed in short time by the termination of all regional staffing and recruitment managers. A decision was subsequently made to outsource all recruitment, and in-house recruiters would be brought in through a recruitment outsourcing provider. As happened in the past with similar decisions by other technology companies, the focus shifted from hiring quality talent to filling the open positions "on time". From our side the relationship completely detoriated.

1) The absence of SLA's led to separate standards and rules of engagement by individual recruiter. Processes and expectations turned into a complete ad hoc series of engagements.

2) Payments remained notoriously late, in some cases up to 8 months overdue. We needed not only to re-issue invoices 3 to 4 times as they went lost, or purchase order numbers were swapped around assignments, and previously approved purchase orders lost validity.

3) Some of the new hiring managers went "freelance", complaining about corporate HR and policies to us, while the same day voicing similar complaints about ourselves to HR. Some of them pushed us to get shortlists as quickly as possible, while waiting to set interview dates for three weeks after receipt of shortlists. İn multiple cases, candidates complained being treated as commodity items.

During one particular third round of interviews, some candidates qualified during two previous rounds withdrew their candidacy after being exposed to what they called an arrogant and disrespectful attitude from the last set of interviewers. Those candidates were then called 3 weeks later by another firm, a consignment based London search provider, for the same positions. We never received any feedback. 

We communicated we would refuse engagements with this client during a discussion to renew cooperation, unless they could come up with clear and unambiguous SLA's. 

The stock of the firm tanked since, and we never heard back.