Q1. How has CH2M HILL been affected by, and reacted to, the global financial crisis?
CH2M HILL has a diverse portfolio with a global reach that is strategically designed to help us weather economic downturns. We have also aggressively assessed and reduced our overhead costs to put us in the strongest financial position possible during this tough business climate. Reductions in overhead costs were achieved by moving overhead people to client-billable project work and lowering funding levels, travel expenses, and capital expenditures. Even though we have some clients in some of our business sectors that are cutting back on their work, others are staying the course and still others are expanding the scope of the work they need us to do so we still need to actively recruit despite the current economic situation. Because our services cross several industries, in addition to hiring new talent, we are often able to aggressively redeploy our existing employees to new projects in other industry segments if the work in the industry segment they’re supporting has finished or has been put on hold or cancelled. This is especially true of employees with critical skills like engineering and project management. In some cases where work has gone away and competencies are not compatible with current hiring needs or there’s been a change in the scope of an overhead team’s focus, some jobs have been eliminated. In 2008, less than 2% of CH2M HILL’s employee population was impacted in this way.
Q2. Why is this a good time to be actively recruiting?
For CH2M HILL this is a good time to be actively recruiting because we have some very exciting projects, both big and small, that require the ongoing hiring of top-tier talent. These projects include the development of the world’s first carbon-neutral, “green” community in Masdar City, a two-square-mile area in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
In 2009, we’ll give special focus on building our talent pipelines for our critical skill positions to ensure we attract the top talent we currently need for open positions as well as develop relationships with candidates for future opportunities. For CH2M HILL, some of our critical skills positions include engineering and construction program and project managers, structural engineers, procurement managers and professionals, piping designers, construction managers, and CAD designers.
Q3. What do employers in general, and CH2M HILL, in particular, look for in new hires now?
Direct industry experience is a big plus. This is even true for college students getting their first jobs. Their intern experience or research experience is all taken into consideration. We have a very participatory work environment, so being able to work well in teams as well as being strong individual contributors is also important. In summary, CH2M HILL looks for candidates who are problem solvers, innovators, and good listeners who deliver real results.
Other key attributes we look for in new hires include:
·Openness to learning
·Flexibility - able to work on wide variety of projects
·Mobility - willing to relocate Additionally, we do a behavioral-based reference check on potential new employees to ensure that they are a match in our culture.
We use a new technology named "Skill Survey" that assesses these major skill sets:
·Interpersonal Skills
·Ability to Deliver Results
·Professionalism
·Commitment to Personal Values We want to ensure that the people we hire are a fit with CH2M HILL’s employee-owned culture and that they will continue to build and strengthen our organization and our leadership pipeline.
Q4. How are those criteria different (if in fact they are!) from, say, a year or two ago?
These criteria probably are very similar to those CH2M HILL followed a year or two ago; however, the globalization of our business has made a candidate’s ability to relocate, travel, or work remotely increasingly more important. In 2009, our focus is on the quality of each hire and critical skills recruitment. Engineers have been classified by Manpower Inc., in a study of 43,000 employers across 32 countries, as the number fourth most difficult to fill on a global basis today. Given this and the need for infrastructure around the world, CH2M HILL will focus more heavily on building the talent pipelines that will enable success in the future, paying particular attention to retirements and the maturing workforce. We will do much more in-depth workforce analysis and planning including workforce analytics and scenario planning so that we are ahead of the curve in attracting and retaining a quality workforce to meet our client needs. As our global needs increase we are now more focused than ever on a global recruiting strategy with operations in 4 different regions of the world – with the Middle East being a key priority. Globally we have looked at new sourcing strategies to improve our presence and create a sustainable employee value proposition (EVP). Our employees tell us they joined CH2M HILL for the challenging projects and the development they get while working on some of the world's most challenging opportunities.
Q5. Does CH2M Hill make a practice of staying in touch with candidates who may not be hired at present, to perhaps hire them for a future opening?
On an individual level, our recruiters definitely keep in touch with their top candidates. However, this is one of our defined strategic initiatives in 2009. We're implementing several new technologies which will make relationship building much easier for our recruiting team and will result in our candidates being much more informed about new opportunities with CH2M HILL. The use of candidate relationship management (CRM) tools will enable a more engaged relationship with candidates, and the use of advanced technologies that feed new openings or new developments at CH2M HILL out to prospective candidates are important in attracting the passive jobseeker in the engineering field. We have more than 500,000 people in our applicant database and as the market tightens for some of our most critical skills, that personal touch and the knowledge that candidates can reach out to our recruiters directly is important in maintaining a relationship until a match is found for them.
Q6. Do you think the source of talent or composition of talent will vary in the Middle East employment marketplace in response to the economic crisis?
At CH2M HILL, we will primarily hire locally in the Middle East to leverage regionally-based talent instead of expatriates, where possible.
David Mason International Talent Acquisition Director CH2M HILL United Kingdom Avon House, Kensington Village, Avonmore Road, London, W14 8TS
