Because Cargill set such high performance standards for itself as a company and for the candidates it attracts, it needed a recruiting system that could support these values. Prior to implementing Taleo, Cargill was using a different applicant tracking system that wasn’t quite fitting the bill. Because Cargill chose to comply with certain guidelines and policies within its recruiting process, it sought a more robust, automated system. It needed a system that would allow it to be responsive to all applicants on a timely basis throughout the hiring process, to communicate in a straightforward manner, to provide realistic job previews of the position and work environment, and to use standardized correspondences to ensure its messaging and employment brand remain as consistent as possible.

In 2003, Cargill implemented Taleo Enterprise RecruitingTM to replace its outdated system and help automate the recruiting process thus enabling its human resources staff to focus on business critical tasks. During the first year after implementing Taleo, Cargill filled 1,000 professional and campus position in the United States, and over time it has expanded use to include Western Europe, Mexico City, Canada and Singapore. In 2008, it filled 2,900 jobs in the United States and 800 additional jobs around the globe. Because more than 100,000 candidates apply annually, Cargill relies on functionality within Taleo to highlight the best qualified applicants, freeing up recruiters’ time to concentrate on the highest value added activities in the recruiting process.

But, Cargill still had some challenges to overcome, including lack of access to global data. To overcome these challenges, Cargill needed better tools to review outcomes and trends to determine where it was succeeding in its talent acquisition and talent management efforts across the organization. Between requests from the HR department and from a number of other business units within the company, hundreds of nearly identical reports were produced on a regular basis. As a result, Cargill had created over 700 reports; all tracking similar metrics—time to fill, applicant demographics, and recruitment activity. However, each report request asked for different fields to be included or asked that the data be sorted in a different manner from previous requests. Because only one internal Taleo system administrator was responsible for report creation, this administrator was inundated with report requests and was spending too much time customizing nearly identical report requests.

Cargill also needed a streamlined process for building reports so data could be filtered by a variety of parameters. By giving users access to reports pre-run with common date parameters (e.g. quarters, fiscal years, etc.) that they could drill into to view the specifics that were most important and relevant to them, Cargill could significantly cut the number of reports being run. Cargill also began allowing users to run ad-hoc reports whenever they wanted based on unique date parameters they required. Being able to schedule reports based on frequently-requested parameters was also key.

Cargill had substantially improved the state of global reporting, however it knew more could be done. In 2007, it made the decision to implement Taleo Reporting and Analytics™. Cargill wanted to use the power of the analytic dashboards to create an environment that would enable recruiters, human resource staff and hiring managers to see not just data but trending information and anomalies that would drive better decision making across the board. The Taleo Reporting and Analytics solution provides Cargill visibility into its recruiting system, and the power to use the data for new insights into the talent processes. The unique role-based dashboard allows users to make decisions in real time, not after the fact. The high-performance architecture and relevant content combine to give a powerful yet intuitive new way to measure, analyze, and optimize talent management.

The functionality of the Taleo analytics tool enabled Cargill to work smarter instead of harder to meet the reporting needs of the different business units and stakeholders. With the scheduling functionality, it could schedule reports to run on a recurring basis using the different business units’ parameters and then automatically email the reports to the appropriate people. This not only saved the different users time from accessing the analytics periodically to run updated numbers on recruiting activities, but also saved the recruiting group time because the reports ran automatically on a recurring schedule. Cargill could also design reports to include the various sorts and data elements so that each user could select or delete the information they wanted to see. It also built various sort orders as different tabs of the same report.

Users can use the standard reports to measure objectives, efficiency, and effectiveness for the recruiting process across organizations and user types. For ad-hoc reports, users can now choose their own date parameters on pre-defined report structures to build custom reports. Taleo Reporting and Analytics also gives Cargill the power to convert multidimensional data into graphics, pie or bar charts with ease. This allows for greater organizational insight. Using the powerful visuals, Cargill can easily identify process bottlenecks, operational challenges, and most relevant talent management metrics.

Using this powerful tool, Cargill built six main reports accessible by business units and HR staff. Key metrics tracked by these reports include active requisitions, recruitment activity, source effectiveness, time to fill, median days in step, and applicant pool demographics. It built reference guides for end users to answer the “so-what” questions to help them understand why these reports were useful and what they could to do to improve the data for their group. “In the past, our internal clients didn’t understand what information they needed and would sometimes get information back
that they weren’t looking for or that wasn’t relevant to them,” says Cheri Hanson, North American Talent Recruiting Operations Manager. “With the help of the reference guides we built for our Taleo reporting system, this doesn’t happen anymore.”

In addition to these key metrics, Cargill also built several audit reports to assist in tracking process effectiveness and efficiency. Example reports include:
• audit report to ensure that all the required data was in the necessary fields throughout the Taleo system
• effectiveness of different applicant funnels
• campus hiring: cost associated with hires; which schools produce the most hires; and GPA of hires
• transactional audit reports to assist with day-to- day internal productivity, i.e. where it was placing jobs on job boards, or the number of applicants it received per month.

Cargill also used its reporting solution to assist with surveying new hires, internal candidates, and hiring managers to determine satisfaction with the recruiting process.

The customizable dashboards allowed Cargill to display recruiting information in a powerful, customized format that included both high level metrics and drilldown detail. The deepest layers of these reports allowed recruiters to track better data within their specific requisitions.

Since implementing Taleo Reporting and Analytics, Cargill not only saves time and money throughout the recruiting process, but also recruits better talent. Cargill is more proactive and responsive to requests for reports and can run reports it was not able to run in the past. With the Taleo reporting system, Cargill now has access to the data necessary to know at a glance who it is extending offers to and who it is hiring.

Using the source effectiveness report data, Cargill determines which sources yield the best results based on location, industry, and job type to maximize advertising time and money. Going forward, it can use this data and only invest money in the sources which yield the highest results. For example, if posting to the major job boards are not yielding the best candidates for hard-to-
fill positions, Cargill now knows to look at other ways of sourcing to find the best talent.

The reporting system also helps with process compliance and process efficiencies. The “median days in step” report measures the days between key milestones in the recruitment process. Data from this report assists in identifying areas of opportunity for training. Cargill determines where the process might be breaking down for one business area or recruiter and can proactively develop a plan to help those situations, allowing the process to become more effective.

Cargill has better visibility into where the recruiting process may be experiencing problems. It uses the active requisition report to measure how many open requisitions it has and how long each requisition has been open. This data can then be represented in a chart, with the newest requisitions being color-coded green and requisitions open longer than 70 days being color-coded red. It can then easily see if there are high numbers of business critical positions that have been open too long and determine a plan of action to fill them more quickly.

Finally, Cargill now has better visibility into what types of candidates are being offered jobs and who it is hiring. For example, in the past if its CEO needed to know how many jobs were filled in the highest level salary bands worldwide and the names and sources of the new hires, employees would have to scramble to find the data country by country. With its Taleo reporting system, it can now run a simple report to find this data. Information that used to take 50 people up to two weeks to compile can now be done by one person in about 30 minutes.