BP

	Harvey Nash responded well to the brief, and through a process of adaptive learning they managed to improve the rate of candidates appointed to candidates fielded from one in four to one in two as a result of better screening and pre-selection
	Rolf Jaeger, HR Director, Process Fitness, BP

Oiling the Wheels

In December 2005 BP faced the challenge of recruiting some 50 IT specialists to help it implement what will be the largest SAP software application it has ever undertaken. This project was to be an integral part of a major reorganisation designed to reduce costs in the company by $1.5bn. BP had approached a number of potential partners, and judged Harvey Nash the best equipped to help.

The brief was demanding, as Rolf Jaeger, HR Director, Process Fitness, admits. “We needed very high-calibre candidates, who had worked on large-scale IT projects in very big organisations, had oil industry experience and exceptional technical expertise. They also needed to fit the culture of BP. That meant they would need leadership, innovation and change management skills, strong ethical values and the ability to make an impact through the power of their personality rather than by virtue of their role. We also wanted the kind of people who would be successful at BP in the medium-to-long term.”

As if this wasn’t enough, BP needed the recruits in place within three months from a marketplace that is difficult at the best of times because of a shortage of skills and competition from lots of different organisations that are all doing similar business transformations.

However, undaunted, the Harvey Nash team, led by John Whiting, director of the Executive IT practice, set to work over Christmas to plan a comprehensive recruitment campaign that included executive search, broadsheet, trade press and internet advertising and a dedicated microsite on the BP website.

But internal BP politics over the scope of the project caused it to stall in February 2006, and it was only in April that recruitment could start in earnest.

“That was a difficult period for Harvey Nash, and it is testimony to their commitment that they were able to drive the thing forward successfully from that point,” says Jaeger.

Harvey Nash left no stone unturned in its search for a range of different specialists, from data architects, to SAP solutions analysts, to Siebel architects, to data analysts. By the end of October BP had made 45 appointments, most of them from the UK, but some from Europe, Saudi Arabia, India and China. “Harvey Nash responded well to the brief, and through a process of adaptive learning they managed to improve the rate of candidates appointed to candidates fielded from one in four to one in two as a result of better screening and pre-selection,” says Jaeger.

The net benefit of the SAP implementation will be almost $1.5bn over the next five years, and the external recruits brought in by Harvey Nash represent around 10% of the critical workforce needed to manage the programme. “These were mission-critical roles, and if we had not been able to fill them we would have struggled to deliver the programme,” concludes Jaeger.