McLaren is a name that resonates with the symphony of extraordinary sports cars and the triumphant echoes of Formula One world championships. In recent years, the British automotive manufacturer has changed its talent management strategy, built on Avature’s ATS.
Employee involvement
“We’re at the absolute outside edge of the automotive industry,” Wilson said to Chris Rainey in a lengthy interview. “We’re the only manufacturer making cars profitably from carbon fiber. That’s a thing which is very attractive to engineers. You layer that up with the exclusivity, the power, the luxury — and the pace that we’re working at. That becomes a really interesting thing for people to come into.”
“Here you’re involved in the entire programs. Every step of the journey happens here at the McLaren Technology Centre.”
“The other piece of the sale is that we’re small. In other automotive businesses, where you have a tiny arena of responsibility, and you’d be looking after one chassis arm or one product. Here you’re involved in the entire programs. Every step of the journey happens here at the McLaren Technology Centre.”
Candidate scarcity
But like any company, McLaren has had to deal with candidate scarcity. “It’s a major thing. Every automotive manufacturer has to meet the same compliance in order to sell in certain markets. That means that every car company is after the same skills. So, you have to take a different approach. A CRM-led approach is key, talent pooling, and that marketing crossover with the recruitment function is a key change, and the technology enables it.”
20 days quicker
Known for providing the world with a certain dose of speed, McLaren looked at technology as a way to speed up another element: its hiring process. “It is a lot of money you’re spending when you’re hiring somebody, but it has to be efficient. Changing the running order of our approvals from a sequential process to a parallel process knocked 20 days off the time it took to approve a role. So we could get to a role quicker, promote it quicker, and start putting candidates forward quicker. And they could be getting interviewed quicker.”
“Changing the running order of our approvals from a sequential process to a parallel process knocked 20 days off the time it took to approve a role.”
But speed is one ingredient to a successful car. Often times, simplicity is another. “The key piece we looked at when we were bringing in new technology was simplifying the process for the hiring managers. They’re not HR managers. Hiring managers are hiring managers for about two seconds in their year. I ran some data at one organisation, and every hiring manager that we dealt with hired 1.2 times a year in that organisation. They’re using the system once, so it has to be simple and slick in terms of approval processes.”
System agility
McLaren landed on Avature’s ATS. “We wanted to make step changes to our hiring process, rather than having to put in a request. Which would be put in the stack, and wait for the developers to make the change. It was about being able to go into a system and then make changes to the dataset, the process, or the workflow. Or add a box, a portal, or all of the things that you need. It was about being agile.”
“If you don’t have access to data and you don’t know how many roles you’ve got open or where people are in the process. And where the candidates are: when they’re due to be selected — that’s where a hiring process can get stuck.”
‘If it goes right, nobody knows’
But with any change in systems, it comes with a healthy dose of change management and implementation questions. Most organisations are faced with challenges around not disrupting the current hiring flow and implementing a new system on the go. So what were some of the biggest learnings for McLaren? “Give it as much time as possible and get as much expertise in as possible,” Wilson said. “Really take your time to think about what you want to do.”
“We were taking the data from one place and putting it into another place. And if it goes right, nobody knows.”
“Check and check again what communication is going out. People’s data is so precious. We’re carrying it over to the new system, so we need to make sure the fields match. The reputation risk of getting something like that wrong is immense. We had 5000 candidate records in the system, at different steps in the process. We were taking the data from one place and putting it into another place. And if it goes right, nobody knows.”
New features
On the back of its new Applicant Tracking System, McLaren had a couple of key features going live in the months after implementing it: talent pooling through a CRM, an internal mobility program, and performance management. “The communication team really worked with the managers and clearly articulated every step in the process. Then we had our own internal team providing everyone with all the information they needed.”
‘I apply for jobs all the time’
When looking at a hiring process, don’t shy away from looking at competitors, Wilson says. “I apply for jobs all the time. So I go onto people’s websites to check out their application processes. I want to see what they’re asking on their forms and how many clicks it takes to apply. Having a flexible system allows you to borrow certain things and integrate them into your own application process.”
Photo copyright: Automotive Rhythms. McLaren F1 Team at the 2021 Turkish Grand Prix
