Client Excellence Awards: Kuehne + Nagel reimagines its recruitment process

Kuehne+Nagel is a global leading logistics and freight forwarding company, serving more than 400,000 customers with 72,000+ employees in 1,395 locations worldwide. The company sees itself as more than just a logistics partner, focussing on how they connect people and communities by ensuring that everyone has access to what powers their businesses and lives.

As a logistics and transport industry leader, Kuehne+Nagel played a key role during the coronavirus crisis, particularly in the delivery of medical supplies. The increased demand meant that the company needed to make quick hires to keep operations moving and remain committed to customers during a time of uncertainty.

Kuehne+Nagel needed to adapt its recruiting system to handle the fluctuations of applications and increased workload for recruiters during this time, all within a remote working environment. The company also wanted to ensure that the candidate experience remained positive and engaging throughout the recruiting process.

Kuehne+Nagel receives a high volume of applicants and during the height of the coronavirus crisis, the number of applicants was even greater. Throughout 2020 alone, the careers page received around 2.5 million unique visitors, converting into around 500,000 applications. All of which needed to be processed quickly to meet the increased business needs.

Recruiters were under a lot of pressure to make informed, smart decisions quickly, as well as navigate the challenge of operating in a remote working environment. Having a centralised system with real-time, accurate data was key for Kuehne+Nagel to process applications and to reallocate team responsibilities remotely during the hiring spree. The candidate experience also needed to remain smooth, so automating part of the recruiting system to ensure all candidate feedback was considered was also an important part of redefining the process.

Cornerstone’s recruiting solution was able to quickly support Kuehne+Nagel’s needs, enabling a fast transition to the virtual recruiting world amid the coronavirus pandemic, as well as helping ensure candidates remained at the heart of the process.

Centralised recruiting platform. Keeping track of the hiring process was important for Kuehne+Nagel, especially during a transformative time. Using Cornerstone, hiring teams worldwide were able to manage and share information quickly, uniting as one team and rising to the recruiting challenge.

Reduced time-to-hire. Despite the number of hires increasing following fluctuating demand, Kuehne+Nagel significantly reduced its time-to-hire by 30%. Conducting interviews were taking up much of the recruitment teams’ time, so the use of pre-recorded interviews was introduced to relieve workload pressure, while still capturing the necessary skills from candidates for the roles.

Decisions driven by data. In the past, Kuehne+Nagel found it challenging to access and manage quality data that could be easily translated into tangible reporting. With Cornerstone Recruiting, Kuehne+Nagel now have the data on hand to manage expectations and track success, including using real-time data to reallocate recruiter’s responsibilities to spread workloads across different teams. Having accurate, quality data was vital to ensure the recruitment team was continually aligned with business demand throughout the pandemic.

Refined candidate experience. Kuehne+Nagel focussed on reducing the dropout rate for each step in the applicant process, even during the difficulties of the Covid crisis and the influx of applications. Integrating automated feedback into the system ensured that every candidate received immediate responses on their application. Candidate feedback on the recruiting process is also encouraged and measured by Kuehne+Nagel to continually improve the hiring process.

Adapted to fast-moving business demands. With pressure to support the business during the ongoing Covid crisis, the company relied on the recruitment team to hire the right people quickly to keep operations moving. With support from Cornerstone, Kuehne+Nagel was able to be more agile and augment recruiters’work to meet the demands of the wider business.