Doka Group: How one small core team deployed advanced recruiting technology across 70 countries worldwide

After evaluating more than 30 Talent Acquisition Suites, Doka chose Smartrecruiters to support their global recruiting.
With our previous technology, it took too long to complete an application. For example, of those who applied for roles at our corporate headquarters, we lost four out of 10 candidates who abandoned their application. Magdalena Sigl HR Business Partner

Industry

Manufacturing & Distribution

Location

Amstetten, Austria

Company

As Doka is a global leader in the construction industry — with 160 offices operating across 5 continents — its hiring model is a decentralized one with recruiters around the globe working together to grow the company in all of its locations.

“SmartRecruiters makes it easier to share, collaborate, and deliver a candidate experience that helps us acquire better talent far more quickly.”
Magdalena SiglHR Business Partner

Challenges

With 6,700 employees and operating in a unique set of diverse hiring environments, Doka faced two fundamental challenges in competing for high quality talent for a wide variety of roles:

  • A less-than-ideal candidate experience created by older technology that required some applicants to spend up to 15 minutes to apply, with no support for mobile devices
  • Poor collaboration among hiring teams widely dispersed worldwide, providing little transparency into the hiring process and no easily used tools for quick and effective communication

Solution

Doka’s search for a new talent acquisition suite included evaluating 31 solutions and then narrowing down their final list to five.

Magdalena said that SmartRecruiters was considered as one of the leading systems partly because one of Doka’s HR IT staff had attended an HR technology event in Paris and was extremely impressed — noting that she recalled “hearing how the SmartRecruiters team really enjoyed demonstrating the system, having fun explaining its functionality with so much enthusiasm.”

The team that made the final selection included Doka’s six regional heads of HR and the majority of the company’s HR managers.

Results

Magdalena explained that the major benefits that SmartRecruiters offers so far include:

Improved candidate experience
Now that applicants can apply far more quickly and via mobile devices, Doka’s candidate experience doesn’t present obstacles to finding great talent. Magdalena pointed out that when she asks candidates about the application process, “they tell us that the speed in replies is very good … and I have not had negative feedback so far.”

More insightful reporting and analytics
Doka now can measure its sourcing far more effectively so that the management can use this data to make more informed decisions. “We see data now that we were not able to see before so can better evaluate where candidates come from,” Magdalena said. “This improved view of our global hiring plan makes it a lot easier for us to channel our job ads.”

More collaboration and visibility
Doka had never benefited from one global recruiting solution. Magdalena pointed out that SmartRecruiters makes it easier for the entire organization to collaborate more effectively and share information, not just locally, but between different regions. “I see colleagues, for example in Austria, getting international applicants who may not be a great fit here, but can share that information overseas — collaboration at a level we did not experience before,” she said.

“In a global organization, it can be all too common to screen candidates in one country and then put them back in a drawer,” Magdalena explained. “But sharing good candidates with the whole Doka world allows us to engage on a global basis, adding value to our employer brand and hiring the best talent for every role.”

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