Working with an aspiring world leading construction services business, Cogito provided extensive research to help recruit talent to new locations. Without this research, the organisation’s whole expansion plan would be at risk, leading to enormous costs and wasted time.
As already one of the leading construction businesses within the UK, our client was ambitious in their goal to establish themselves as one of the world’s most dynamic construction services companies. From their near 30 years of service, they boast a workforce of over 2800 worldwide, as well as established global hubs within Europe, the Middle East and Asia, nevertheless, they remain dedicated to the continued growth of the business.
Understandably, the continued growth of a business within the construction industry will more often than not result in expansion into other international markets – this offers the business the opportunity to work on different types of projects for companies, which would enable them to build their portfolio further. Although expansion into international markets is something that the business has successfully completed before, they were interested in building their operations, with sights to recruit professionals within three locations of India – Mumbai, Delhi and Jakarta. With so much focus on one location, it was essential that they were understanding of the candidate market, as well as details regarding the taxation laws and processes within the country. With such a large volume of data required to validate their focus on India, our client engaged with us to understand the Indian market, as well as the practices of businesses and employees within the location. Ultimately, our client provided us with eight questions in which our research would settle:
- What are the key benefits received by candidates in each location?
- What is the prevalence of different types of employment in each country?
- What are the average notice periods for each location/role?
- What are the top-level considerations about taxation in each location?
- How does density of talent for each role in each location compare?
- What are the local trends in how people look and how to engage them?
- What are the common job titles for each role in each location?
- Who are the main competitors that are building data centres near each location and how big are they?
Research Processes
Due to the variety of our clients’ questions, we needed to venture into different research streams and therefore conducted multiple research studies. Our initial stage required us to conduct telephone interviews with potential candidates based in each of the desired locations, this was then followed by in-depth desk-based research.
At the completion of this phase of research, we had identified and approached a total of 2,208 individuals whom were both within the company’s desired locations and were recognised to be relevant to their target roles. Of these, we completed 193 full telephone interviews, alongside collecting 284 data points from other sources, these were used to collaborate and increase the confidence in data that was used for the telephone interviews. From this, we were able to identify the average salary of candidates, as well as the comparison of this depending on the type of projects that they have worked on, we also developed charts which illustrated the correlation between the salaries, years of experience and size of projects that people have previously worked on. Our research also established how the talent pool is paid (Monthly vs Salary), the currency in which they would be paid and the average salary within each location and role. On top of salary insights, we also provided our client with information on the benefits that the talent pool receive, reporting which benefits and premium pay more are most frequently offered, the prevalence of each of these, again, these were broken down by location. From our telephone interviews, we were also able to present our client with information on what type of contract their candidates are on (including understanding their notice period), what channel they are most likely to respond to when looking for a new role and their willingness to relocate. We provided commentary on each of our findings to contextualise our research into a way that succinctly answered their desired questions.
We also carried out extensive desk-based research to support our telephone interviews. This analysed the frequency of which candidates worked for competitor businesses in the pool of individuals identified for the telephone interviews. We also completed research which presented the businesses who have data centres within each of the business’ desired locations. Finally, it was important for our client to understand the taxation practices of each of their desired locations to ensure that a recruitment project there would be financially feasible, our research explained the taxation practices of each of the locations with graphs to illustrate annual projections.
Essential First Stage in Recruitment Process
Our findings were submitted virtually via our sophisticated insights provider, enabling us to provide live charts and graphs alongside our research and commentary as well as allowing our client to implement filters to our data to segregate the results via each location, this was presented virtually to senior stakeholders within the business.
It is likely that our client recognises this project as an essential initial stage in their plans to recruit talent to each of their desired locations, which will understandably serve as an integral part of their expansion plans. Without this process, our client could have initiated their recruitment project without a full understanding of their talent pool, or the practices of each of their locations, which could have made their recruitment less successful, and subsequently put their expansion plans at risk.
Cogito were excited to be part of such of an extensive People Insights research projects, and look forward to future projects of this nature.
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