DHL

Background

Robert Walters was approached by DHL to act as a first-tier supplier to support the firm during a significant period of growth for their Jaguar Land Rover contract. Jaguar Land Rover is one of DHL’s largest 3PL accounts, with a headcount of 3,500 DHL staff across all JLR sites. DHL were managing all of JLR’s internal logistics, warehousing and sequencing of parts directly in to line side on a just-in-time basis. Continuous growth in the market led to the launch of four new JLR vehicles, which meant DHL would need to implement four completely new operations across 3 shifts to manage this volume. This would effectively take DHL’s headcount on the JLR contract from 3500 to 4500 within 18 months.

Approach

After an initial briefing meeting with DHL, a detailed hiring strategy was agreed with the client to ensure that the shortlisted candidates were within the top 25% of people available in the market. It was also vital to secure a good cultural fit between the organisation and the candidate. The Robert Walters recruitment team began by mapping out all high quality automotive businesses within a one hour parameter of the facilities, followed by the same approach for logistics and manufacturing. To ensure that we were capturing the broadest candidate pool, we also included highly process driven and automated FMCG businesses, as it was agreed with the client that we could find transferrable experience from these areas. An extensive search of the Robert Walters database was carried out and a bespoke co-branded advertising campaign was delivered to attract the large passive candidate talent pool.

Solution

The Robert Walters team worked in collaboration with the internal recruitment team at DHL throughout the entire recruitment process. This included the candidate sourcing, attraction and advertising strategy, as well as managing the initial interview stages and offer process prior to intensive candidate assessments. Robert Walters delivered a diverse recruitment strategy which helped DHL overcome the challenges of finding high quality candidates in a relatively candidate short geographic location.

Results

Robert Walters has placed 40 new managers in DHL’s JLR contract since the project began 18 months ago. Robert Walters still stands as the first point of contact across the country for ongoing recruitment, becoming a trusted recruitment partner to DHL whilst continuing to deliver the highest quality candidates within a highly competitive market.

“I worked closely with Robert Walters from the start of my secondment with the JLR contract, I found them extremely professional and focussed. The contract can be very challenging at times but Robert Walters never lost sight of the goal, they were patient and worked with me and not against me when it came to hiring managers.Nothing is too much trouble for Abdul (Account Manager).

Robert Walters were constantly coming up with new ideas to drum up new talent for the contract, adapting the way of working to suit. Even though my secondment has come to an end I hope that we still continue to have a great working relationship and look forward to a bright future between Robert Walters and DHL”

- Sarah Wilson, Resourcing Manager – Operational Lead, DHL

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