On your mark, get set…recruit! As a new start-up airline that launched in November 2011, Scoot’s HR team was faced with the enormous challenge of recruiting over 300 staff in its first year. Being a niche industry, these new recruits had to be highly-specialised airline talent comprising around 60% cabin crew, 25% deck crew and 15% ground crew. However, the airline’s existing recruitment system was entirely manual—with the HR team reviewing, by hand, each submitted resume to determine if candidates were suitably qualified for available positions.

Starting with only a handful of employees in August 2011, Ivan Chuah, Scoot’s HR Manager, rose to this challenge and set his sights high—aiming to bring on board close to 220 new hires in under a year. To cope with this mammoth task, Chuah needed a system in place that could not only handle volume recruitment, but could also help pre-screen and qualify such talent—ensuring that selected candidates met the specific needs of the airline and were well aligned with the company’s high-flying culture.

Background

For more information: asia@silkroad.com | www.silkroad.com

“One of the biggest value-add to the SilkRoad OpenHire

recruiting software is its ability to attract, sort and pre-qualify candidates required for mass

recruitment drives.

Ivan Chuah HR Manager Scoot

Sky-high recruiting - how SilkRoad’s OpenHire recruiting software has empowered Singapore’s newest airline, Scoot, with an

efficient, flexible means of mass-recruitment to fill key vacancies both on the ground and in the air.

Scoot Career Portal and Social Media

Flexible, scalable recruiting software that develops and adapts with the company Scoot turned to SilkRoad, specifically its OpenHire recruiting software, for help in achieving its ambitious recruitment targets. The flexibility of the OpenHire recruiting software has been invaluable and meant that while the airline was ‘learning on its feet’ which recruitment methods were most effective, SilkRoad was able to provide a web-based applicant tracking system to best leverage available recruitment channels.

Each time Scoot posts job advertisements they get inundated with close to seven hundred applications - all of which require detailed screening by the HR team. Compared to traditional manual-recruitment methods, the assessment capability of OpenHire’s Competency, Qualification and Education (CQE) libraries allowed Scoot to significantly streamline the process by pre-qualifying key talent. Rather than merely viewing submitted resumes, the HR team is now able to screen candidates’ suitability based on key assessments and system-generated evaluation scores. The HR team can also give candidates tailor-made questionnaires and ask them to perform specific tasks to help reveal key character traits. This functionality provides the HR team with access to meaningful metrics on applicants including their level of determination, how disciplined they are and how they would handle common customer scenarios. In this way, qualified talent can be pre-screened, leaving the HR team with a much more manageable pool of better-qualified candidates who better fit the airline’s culture.

Chuah explained that since its introduction in February 2012, the system has helped reduce the time required to deal with applications by almost 20%. Additionally, the system’s reporting functions further helps hiring managers identify exactly where the best candidates are coming from.

With less time wasted on laborious recruitment administration, OpenHire frees up more time for hiring managers to invest on more strategic recruitment functions.

Solution

Leveraging passive recruitment Even when no positions are currently available, the Open Prospects function of the recruitment platform allows candidates to store their details on a central database allowing the airline to notify them should a suitable position arise in the future. Hiring managers also have the option of manually tapping into the Open Prospect talent pool and retrieving the information of candidates previously identified as suitable for specific roles. Chuah noted, “This system been helpful as it has enabled us to retain and review resumes for future use.”

On track for taking off Since adopting OpenHire Scoot has already hired 170 staff, and with a further 50 candidates already identified as potential candidates. Chuah is confident that with the system in place, the airline will comfortably meet their recruitment milestones. He added, “Management of candidates within the application is easy and readily configurable. We can configure and roll out the system in phases - allowing us get it up and running as quickly as possible, while being able to adjust and enhance functionality of the system.”

End-to-End HR Software | www.silkroad.comTalent Acquisition | Talent Development | HRMS | Talent Portal

Scoot Welcomes

Most effective recruitment channels:

Cabin crew - via newspaper advertisements and Facebook

Ground crew - via general job boards and recruitment agencies

Pilots and deck crew - via industry-specific job boards

10 MONTHS Recruitment timeframe from launch of Scoot flights

Number of employees at Startup

Average hires per month (prelaunch of Scoot flights)

Number of applications per vacancy

Target number of employees

Average hires per month

Time saved using OpenHire

11

45

650+

350

22

20%