Recruiting Case Study with BP EUROPA SE ZN BP Austria

Anyone looking for an international career is well placed with BP. Just recently, epunkt filled an HR management role for BP in the Czech Republic - within five days. Our contact Georg Schlotter is an HR Manager in Operations & Transformation at BP. In this interview, he gives insight into the cooperation with epunkt and why he believes in a new methods in recruitment.

Mr. Schlotter, what experience have you had in your working relationship with recruitment firms? What is your assessment of this sector?

Unfortunately many recruitment consultants are still stuck in 90s. Only a minority use modern technology, relying on a relatively small network to shunt candidates from A to B within a country. As a global company, our requirements are quite different.

How would you describe working with epunkt?

For our project we were able to take advantage of the international cooperation wtihin the epunkt group provided by Talentor colleagues.

Can you describe the procedure of a specific project with epunkt?

Well, we filled a vacancy within one week, so there isn't much to tell (laughs). What was crucial was that my contact in Vienna knew, due to the evidently good networks with his colleagues, that his colleague in Prague had a few weeks earlier filled a vacancy that was identical to ours.

Are there any challenges in recruitment that apply particularly to your sector?

I don't think that we are so fundamentally different from other global corporations. We are looking for the best specialists who are a good fit both in terms of competence and values. Country borders are increasingly becoming irrelevant.

Recruitment processes have change substantially due to digitisation. Where do you think this path will lead in future?

When I look at the HR startups founded in recent months, then it is clear that nothing in this market is going to remain the same. What I am personally interested in is how technology is currently revolutionising the matching process. Perhaps the recruitment consultant of the year 2020 will simply be the person who filters the ideal candidate automatically generated by the system from a carefully curated candidate pool? Or who calls me on the basis of the online behaviour of my employees, already aware of an impending resignation before the employee has even expressed it? But transparent criteria will play a large part in future even in the selection of a recruitment consultancy, not only the reputation of the consultancy in the market. A kind of Tripadvisor and Checkfelix for recruitment consultancies.

How is BP responding to these challenges, or have these changes affected BPs recruitment procedure?

My colleagues in the UK have a lot of good ideas in in this area; it is also quite exciting that from the point when the contract is signed, we are already starting to communicate virtually with future employees and start onboarding them. Because onboarding of employees is fundamental to recruitment success!