M H Alshaya Co, a Dubai-based retail giant, has contracted Hiring Solutions and its Sniperhire recruitment platform to speed up its recruiting process.

Sniperhire promises to provide Alshaya, currently operating 1,400 stores and selling 40 international retail brands in 16 countries, a definite edge over its competitors including sending out real-time SMS updates to potential candidates seeking employment with the company, said a senior official. 

“Hiring the best retail talent globally requires competing with the world’s biggest retail employers,’’ said Paul Williams, HR director – Middle East at Alshaya. “The SMS solution is part of our hiring strategy to compete with the best. Mobile phone penetration is higher and more accessible than email the world over and we wanted to capitalise on this before anybody else in this region,” he added.

Nic Beesley, senior vice-president – Group HR, said Alshaya’s objective is also to spare candidates the agony of second-guessing the status of their application. “We are in a business where candidates are also customers and by enhancing candidate experience with features like SMS and email updates, we hope it will reflect well on Alshay,” he said.

“From now on, all jobseekers applying for Alshaya vacancies will know exactly where they stand. Whether they are short-listed or called for an interview, every candidate will receive real-time SMS updates, regardless of which part of the world they live in.”

The Sniperhire platform also works on other levels enabling better recruiter efficiency. With it, recruiters can focus purely on processing applications of quality candidates and respond faster to line-manager requisitions. Apart from the SMS feature, Sniperhire screens, scores and ranks thousands of CVs within seconds. It can be integrated to independent psychometric test engines as well as multiple sourcing channels such as recruitment agencies, company career portal, job boards and blogs allowing recruiters at Alshaya to publish new vacancies on their choice of sourcing channels with just a few clicks.

Sniperhire organises all CVs received by Alshaya and forms a private talent pool that could be used for future vacancies, thus, reducing the time and money spent on recruitment.
 
Alshaya franchisee for brands including Starbucks, Mothercare, H&M, Debenhams, The Body Shop, MAC and Estee Lauder, throughout the Middle East, Turkey, Cyprus, Russia, Poland, Egypt, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia.

HOW THE SMS UPDATE SYSTEM WORKS

SMS updates work on various levels and each organisation can pick and choose what kind of updates they intend sending and to what category of candidates. Each SMS is sent in addition to an email.

* In a fully functional SMS update scenario, as soon as a line manager’s request for additional staff is budgeted and approved, he or she receives an SMS stating that the vacancy is ready to be posted.

* The line manager later receives another SMS stating the names of all the sourcing channels on which the vacancy is published.

* For every application received an SMS is sent. It thanks the person for applying along with the registration id for future correspondence.

* Short-listed candidates then receive SMSes informing them about their current status.

* When a candidate needs to be interviewed, an SMS is sent requesting to log on to the company’s career portal and select from the vacant interview time-slots most comfortable to them.

* A day before a scheduled interview, the line manager receives a reminder SMS about the upcoming interview.

* The same routine continues for the next round of interviews whereby SMSes are sent to selected candidates and candidates that did not make the cut.

* The candidate finally selected receives a congratulatory SMS informing about the job offer and requesting the person to check his or