Greg Allen, Head of Resourcing

Symbian develops and licenses Symbian OS software, the market leading open operating system for advanced, data-enabled mobile phones. Established in 1998 it now has close to 1200 staff with offices in the UK, Japan, Sweden, Israel, Korea, China, USA and India. During the first half of 2006, 24 million mobile phones using Symbian OS were shipped globally, bringing the worldwide installed base to over 82 million phones.

In early 2006 Symbian commissioned hyphen to carry out an analysis or ‘health check’ of its recruitment function. Symbian’s wanted to understand how their recruitment function compared with other organisations and their competitors. The success of Symbian’s business relies upon attracting leading edge software and telecom’s skills. The recruitment health check developed by hyphen focused on a number of key areas:

• Resource planning and demand management
• Candidate attraction strategies including the use of direct methods, campaigns and the use of agencies
• Selection techniques including screening, interviewing, technical testing, assessment centres and psychometric testing
• Candidate management including managing expectations and providing feedback
• Capabilities of Symbian staff to support the recruitment process
• Legislative risks and exposures

Following the delivery of our comprehensive report containing findings and recommendations for short and longer-term improvements, Symbian chose to implement the majority of the changes proposed by hyphen. These have included training programmes for hiring managers in recruitment strategies and competency-based interview techniques, together with a re-launch of its employer brand.

hyphen continues to work with Symbian on delivering improvements in its recruitment process and attraction and selection strategies.