Recruitment is one of countless facets of business life that have been revolutionised by the web. A study by the ACE Research Group published in January 2009 found that 71% of jobseekers considered online job sites the best place to look for work.
Global healthcare company Roche has a voracious appetite for talent – it employs around 80,000 people in 150 countries. And in 2003, the company took a strategic decision to make the web its principal recruitment channel.

At the time, however, there was no way of collating and coordinating all the CVs and job applications received across the world. The company therefore sought out a system that could provide applicants with a single point of entry for their applications, and managers a single repository for all relevant CVs.

The company selected Taleo’s on-demand talent management application, as it was considered to be the most adept at handling the complexity of Roche’s global recruitment requirements. In particular, it was able to support the different types of staffing organisation within the corporation – both centralised and decentralised.

The Taleo system – rolled out in 2005 – now supports the company’s recruitment website, Careers.roche.com, providing that single point of entry for applicants. The system provides managers and HR staff with the visibility into all applications, creating a talent pool keen to work for Roche, and also helps existing employees track vacancies in the organisation.

As a mark of the project’s success, Roche was the highest climber in 2005’s Universum Graduate Survey, which polls graduates on their attitudes to potential employers.